I stared at the shape in my left breast in the reflection of his wire-rimmed glasses, oddly unafraid, buoyed by a trusting detachment, as if it wasn’t me I was watching, my body I was seeing. I was listening to the breath in my ears bouncing inside my head as if it was a favorite song on my iPod. It was a week later and this was the second step.In the operating room Dr. Dowlat worked with nimble gloved fingers, red with my blood, his calm voice punctuating the silence with periodic reassurances. I was not asleep, I was not under, but I was dwelling in a suspended fiction, not quite sure how I could watch the image of my own operation without emotion. I was fascinated by the insertion of the brachytherapy tube, the new device that would deliver the radiation for my breast cancer treatment, the turkey baster that would save my life. I would have none of the skin problems or exhaustion associated with six weeks of traditional radiation. I would not get the tattoo. Every other external radiation patient I knew had a tattoo on her breast to mark the exact spot where radiation should be concentrated.Dr.
