Marjorie, Problem Child, Goes to Rehab

So I haven’t written a damn thing in months. I started to write some depressing piece about how down I was feeling a few months ago called “Demons” but the feeling passed and then the moment passed and the few incoherent dribblings I managed to eek out will forever fester in the land of blog post drafts where they belong.

It is now May. The month of my birth. And swiftly approaching is my 44th birthday. 44. A nice round number. It feels like ages ago that my 40th was approaching. We had a party at an Italian restaurant in London. Bill, who suddenly took deathly ill the day of the party — he was literally green and nauseated — managed to drink a Coke, rally and give a heartfelt speech about how great I am. There are pictures of me embracing him following such speech and veering to one side (because I did not want to catch whatever the fuck was ailing him in my delicate condition).

Never in one million years would I have believed you had you told me in advance that I would be as bald as a cue ball for my fortieth. It was such. A weird. Thing.

Moving right along.

When last we met I was going on about how hot I was planning to be super hot this year following Marjorie’s scar revision. (Read my previous post if this is not ringing a bell). Forever the optimist, I kept thinking that “this time around” Marjorie might be okay. That she would come out of it and be better. But the reality is that I am just not sure about Marjorie.

She is not what I would call behaving 100%. You see, radiated skin does what the hell it wants to. It is never the same following the radiation, which affects, among other things, the blood supply, and tends to make things fibrotic (think tight and painful). So when the swelling from surgery subsided and the scar went from looking like Frankenstein’s monster’s forehead to a discolored horizontal line, I noticed the skin around the incision starting to harden up. And telltale signs of the tethering that we were trying to fix in the first place.

The turn of events went something like this: There I was minding my own business abstaining from upper body exercises for what seemed like an eternity and then I had a post-op check-up and got the all clear and then it snowed. Not a little.

So I took it upon myself to go out and shovel the hell out of my considerable driveway, which was the first upper body workout I had done in about 6 weeks. The day after that, I noticed that Marjorie was starting to hint at being up to her old tricks. It was like finding a lighter in your kid’s room after you caught them with cigarettes (or worse) and they swore they would never smoke again.

Shit, I thought. Marjorie is up to her old tricks again. I am assured that shovelling snow did not suddenly cause this behavior, but naturally I began blaming myself for this possible development and wondering why I didn’t just leave the snow and let everyone make fresh tracks in it.

The good news: Marjorie looks better than she did before. She does. I have not dusted off the chick fillets or resulted to spackle and I can wear stuff sans padding and be pretty happy with the result.

The bad news: there is definitely some misbehavior. Marjorie is not, in the esteemed words of Taylor Swift, out of the woods.

Solution: Marjorie goes to rehab.

That’s right, the bitch, in classic attention seeking fashion, is demanding all sorts of special treatment. This includes being massaged with expensive body cream from France and a special scar tweaking rub that I do about twice a day, time permitting, to try to loosen up that area. And we even see a specialist physiotherapist who deals only with problem children such as Marjorie. This is weird because every time you cross paths with someone coming or going from the PT’s office you know this person is a member of the same club and she knows you are too. It isn’t discussed. It is a silent understanding, hanging heavily in the air. All of us ladies and our Marjories.

We are not praying for perfection or even really hoping for normal. Rather we seek improvement; we are just trying to make these casualties of war “as good as they can be.”

This is where a bunch of people will chime in that we ladies are just lucky to be alive and that this is what’s important and we should be thankful for that because it could have been worse.

Here’s a bit of advice. Don’t you ever even THINK of saying that to me or someone like me. It’s dismissive and ridiculous. As if we, of all people, do not understand that having a sightly dented boob and some pain and tethering from scar tissue, or even NO BOOB, is preferable to being six feet under. Ask yourself why you would say such a thing? Is it to make the recipient of the comment feel better, really? Or is it a nice tidy end to an uncomfortable topic that you have decided is no longer worth discussing?

Hell to the NO.

Seeking improvement is a normal human behavior and part of the process of getting on with one’s life. So this should be encouraged (unless of course the person at issue becomes obsessed or unrealistic about what is possible at which point it might become unhealthy behavior).

But just let me try to make her a little better. I can settle for “good enough.”

At the end of the day, the irony is that Marjorie is getting by far more play than her predecessor ever would have on a daily basis, and she cannot even feel it.

What a waste.

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