Review: Why I Wore Lipstick To My Mastectomy – Geralyn Lucas
January 1, 2007 | Filed under Reviews
Geralyn Lucas has shaped a really touching tale with this memoir. As women, perhaps the most physically distinguishing feature that separates us from men is our breasts…they are the feature that certainly seems to attract men to us! What happens then, when like Lucas, we have a mastectomy and lose a breast to cancer? Are we still women? Can we still feel feminine and attractive to the men in our life?
One of the most horrifying things is that Lucas lost her breast when she was twenty-eight. One of the bravest is that she makes the decision to have a mastectomy herself, for the benefit of her health. She had the bravery to make an important decision like that herself, even when her doctors were suggesting that she simply have a lumpectomy, in order to preserve her breast. They had her age and physical appearance in mind, whereas she made the best choice for herself and decided to have a mastectomy for the benefit of her health, to make sure she was entirely free of cancer.
Cancer isn’t just about the physical struggles that go with it, but the emotional and mental too. For Lucas, she just wanted people to continue perceiving her as an individual, as someone who had a family, a career, a husband, a life. She didn’t want to become just another number, just another statistic of “women with breast cancer”. She wanted her surgeons to understand that she was a real person, not just another body to operate on. With this in mind, she puts on bright red lipstick before going into the operating room, to hold onto some aspect of her identity.
The memoir also details aspects of her rehabilitation. We join Lucas on her journey: when she has chemotherapy, when she loses her hair, when she starts speaking in public about her fight, when she defies doctors to have a child, when she goes through the difficulties of breastfeeding her child with her remaining breast, and in a final triumphant moment, when she is photographed bare-chested for a calendar, proudly displaying her battle scars, because yes, she has survived.
Why I Wore Lipstick To My Mastectomy is an excellent memoir, inspiring to any woman. It introduces some important issues – to put one’s health before one’s physical appearance because when it comes down to it, it’s not our breasts that make us female, it’s our courage and bravery when faced with a tough decision like this.
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