Discussing Breast Cancer

This month’s book club selection was Geralyn Lucas’ memoir. The book has enjoyed lots of hype; check out its spin off website. (The Lifetime movie based on the book is available on that site for download. FYI, I saw the movie and I’m not sure the book was better. It was more in-depth, and more honest, though I’m not sure that’s a good thing.)

Geralyn was 27 when she was diagnosed. She had a killer job at 20/20, one she earned and deserved, and a doctor husband, who she probably also earned and deserved. She began wearing red lipstick in college and each time she put it on she felt her confidence rise. Red lipstick gave her power. So much power that she wore it to her mastectomy surgery and her topless photo shoot for SELF magazine’s annual breast cancer handbook. That was the overall theme of the book — a good theme indeed.

I feel bad, really bad, for saying this … but her job, her husband, her connections … they all made Geralyn a bit unreal to me. (Barbara Walters sent her three dozen white roses while she was in the hospital for heaven’s sake, not something many of us can relate to.)

Also, Geralyn was way to wrapped up in physical beauty to begin with for us to have much in common. I should have expected that, it says right on the front jacket of the dust flap that she was “a young girl with cancer in a beauty-obsessed culture.” My looks have never defined me and hers sure as heck have.

In the first chapter, Geralyn wrote, “First my breast will be cut off. Then my hair will fall out. And when there is nothing left to strip, maybe there will be a revelation of a different beauty underneath.”

Amen, I thought, bring it on! I wanted to read about her revelation. But I didn’t. Instead I read about her implants and her personalized tattoo — her recovery process all seemed so vain. I was just so happy to be alive after my double mastectomy/reconstruction, I really didn’t care if I was still turning heads (Geralyn was proud that she’d always turned heads before, that was part of who she was).

Now before you start getting all turned off by the book, there were great anecdotes inside, however, and I thought it was easy and entertaining to read. Like this one from Chapter 4: “If a one-balled-man and an about-to-be-one-boobed-woman can somehow end up dancing in a taxi in a city of millions and figure out this hidden truth within the span of a seven minute cab ride then somehow I will survive this ordeal.” I loved that line. I also loved the truth to which she was referring … that “any luck thrown our way we need to grab and try to believe good things will happen.” it’s a great truth. A truth deeper than physical appearance meaning the world.

I wanted Geralyn to be as empowered as she claimed to be as she lost her hair but instead she clung to the very last piece with utter dependency.

I wanted Geralyn to write more about the trouble she had with her husband during that time and help me understand that she was able to make love to him the night she came home from the hospital, draw apart from him after that, then come together to have a child with him … I wanted more from her there and I didn’t get it.

In Chapter 12, she wrote she “had definitely discovered” her “inner cleavage” but she didn’t show me that she had. As a writer, I kept thinking … show me Geralyn, don’t tell me.

Perhaps the most meaningful line in the entire book was written in the afterward: “Sometimes I think about what would have happened had I not done that breast exam and saved my life. All the moments and all the lipstick shades I would have missed.”

That’s powerful. I love that she laced the lipstick analogy throughout the entire book and even ended with it in just that way. It’s a powerful analogy about power.

I just didn’t feel she really, really believed what she was writing.