I managed to convince her to let me pay for the appointment when I returned. I had just booked a job for an online talk show that paid way more than I had ever made, so I was finally able to afford things like gas and brand-name birth control. I never thought the day would come when I could actually pronounce the name of my birth control, but here I was, living the American dream.
A month later, I met with the breast reconstruction doctor. He was comically late, which I found shocking given that the people signing up to see him were probably up against enough emotional stress, but if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that the lower your expectations are of people, the happier you’ll be. The doctor burst into the room and fired off very personal questions while struggling to write things down with a pen that was out of ink and seemed to have been so for a while now. He did that thing where you put the pen to your tongue to try to, you know, moisten it up. This, for whatever reason, for me is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, so I am shocked I didn’t puke on him. The good/bad news is that I had not eaten lunch due to my eating disorder, so the only reason I didn’t is because there really wasn’t anything available to throw up.
To make matters worse, the doctor had a white crust like smegma in the corners of his mouth that frantically danced around like wet cobwebs while he talked. I was trying to will him with my mind to wipe his mouth off, but it seemed like he had literally no idea it was there. How could a man responsible for aesthetic perfection be so oblivious to such a visual disaster? This was yet another red flag on yet another man I chose to ignore.
I was wearing one of those paper-thin gowns, which went perfectly with my paper-thin self-esteem. The doctor—let’s call him Dr. Smegma—summoned a nurse to come into the room to supervise our appointment. Once she came in, he asked me to open my gown. I assume this was to avoid any kind of malpractice lawsuits, but I felt way more uncomfortable with the female chaperone there staring at us. The situation just made me think of scenarios I never would have considered had she not come in. Why does my doctor need a babysitter? That can’t be a good sign. I guess this is a common practice, but it just ended up feeling like an awkward, half-assed threesome. When I took the gown off, he took in my chest.
“Oh, you have scoliosis,” he said with an equal mix of nonchalance and arrogance.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
He bugged his veiny eyes out at me. “You didn’t know that?”
His face told me it was very weird that I didn’t know by now that my spine was essentially in the shape of the lightning bolt emoji. I was so embarrassed that I pretended that I misheard him and totally knew that my spine was trying to run away from my neck.
I couldn’t really process the information I was getting, mostly because I was so distracted by the manner in which I was getting it—in a cold room, with two strangers, while being overcharged. Doctors need to come up with a more genteel way of throwing out their diagnoses. I wish they would do their evaluation, then just let me go home. An hour or so later I’d check my e-mail and find a charming Paperless Post, yellow paisley print background with cherubic bluebirds holding a ribbon that reads: “Hey! you have scoliosis! Now you can freak out and cry in the privacy of your own home!”
The doctor didn’t notice my obvious confusion and got more intense from there: “Scoliosis is why your breasts are asymmetrical. Were you anorexic?”
I uttered a bunch of mumbles that eventually added up to a yes. He explained that if I hadn’t eaten enough fat and protein during puberty, breast tissue couldn’t grow, and that the damage can be irreversible. Even if you’re genetically predisposed to have breasts that fit your frame, they won’t come in. Basically they were stunted, and since one had developed first, they just kinda froze where they were. This obviously makes a ton of sense, but when I was twelve and my eating disorder took over, making sense wasn’t really a part of my repertoire.
Dr. Smegma took a couple of X-rays, which confirmed that my spine was in the shape of a menorah. I felt a combination of devastation and relief: devastated that I had this condition, yet relieved that someone validated my paranoia that something was wrong. Basically my shoddy tits were a combo of malnourishment and trash genetics, not the demons in my head.
Dr. Smegma handed me a big binder of photos of women’s before-and-after pictures. It reminded me of those Trapper Keepers I had in middle school that had chubby unicorns on them and shockingly noisy Velcro flaps. It felt weird that in such a serious adult situation I was thinking about such innocent times in middle school. I flipped through the photos jealously. The breasts all looked very fake to me, but at least they were symmetrical.
At least they didn’t look like those fake boobs that look like grapefruits topped with alligator eyes, but I still insisted that whatever had to happen, it had to be natural-looking.
“I don’t want them bigger. Just even. I’m a comedian, so I can’t look ridiculous. Please don’t make me look like a cartoon.”
I noticed that in the “after” photos, the women’s breasts were always more plump and even, but I mostly noticed that the women also seemed to be sucking in their stomachs. Maybe I was projecting, but from that I deduced that now that these women had fixed their breasts, suddenly they were worried about their waistline, as if corrective surgery was like a game of whack-a-mole: Once you knock out one insecurity, another one pops up. The notion certainly didn’t stop me from scheduling surgery for the following week.
Couple things: If a surgeon is available within the next week, do not go to that surgeon. If you have cancer or something that needs to be operated on immediately, obviously don’t take my stupid advice. I was too young to know that it’s alarming when a surgeon’s schedule is wide open. You want your surgeon to be booked solid, but to have a last-minute cancellation or to be nice enough to squeeze you in between the innumerable surgeries he has. The next red flag is that the surgery was by the airport. Going to the airport not stressful enough for you? How about we add an invasive surgery you’re ambivalent about to your trip!
I was terrified to tell my boyfriend at the time that I was planning on getting my breasts “reconstructed.” That word was so dehumanizing, I felt like I was an old apartment building that had asbestos. I practiced what I would say and how I would say it over and over, terrified he would judge me, abandon me, hate me, lose respect for me. Again, I thought he would see me the way I saw myself. I mustered all the courage I had and dissociated just enough to get the words out of my mouth. I remember exactly what I said because I practiced it so many times.
“So, I know this sounds insane, and I totally don’t have to do it and I can totally cancel it or reschedule it or whatever, but my whole life I’ve been so insecure about my chest that I was thinking about getting it fixed. It’s just like one thingy that would balance them out, but I totally don’t have to if you don’t want me to.”