Vanity and vulnerability

on being confused when I look in the mirror

Photo by Akram Huseyn on Unsplash

Last week I had an operation to remove some cancer from my forehead. It wasn’t the bad type of cancer, although some frantic Googling told me it also wasn’t a very good kind. I expect there probably isn’t a good kind of cancer, but there are definitely less bad ones, and that’s what I’ve been dealing with.

I’d had this cancer before, on my cheek. The day I went for a biopsy it was cold. February. Just before Valentine’s Day and I’d been ghosted by my first Bumble encounter. I lay on the bed and the nurse was kind to me while I cried. She thought I was reacting very strongly to a small procedure that would not leave much of a mark. This happens sometimes. Professional people are kind to me and I am not used to it because often they have been unkind. I fall into an uncomfortable but seductive sense of security and pour my heart out. This happens less now, because I’m not always so alone, but back then I was drowning in loneliness and the last thing I needed was a puncture wound in my cheek. I felt tears dribbling down my neck as one nurse injected anaesthetic into my face and another held my hand. I told them I had no one to look after my poorly daughter, and had left her with another daughter. I told them I was a full time carer, that no one would help me educate my child. The nurse looked worried and asked who was looking after me, and I cried a bit harder, because I didn’t know what to say. My village was rickety and broken and now I had a hole in my face.

It turned out to be cancer, but also the biopsy removed it all, so that was that. Apart from a soggy, depressing night in a hotel on my own in Tynemouth where I desperately wanted to be having sex with someone who adored me, and not bingeing One Day on Netflix and howling, the cancer at least had been sorted out. The next morning in Tynemouth, still utterly miserable, I took some selfies of myself with my biopsy wound hidden by my hair. I was thin and sad but I hoped perhaps I was still a bit beautiful, and maybe someone out there might love me properly One Day. I’d had a tiny taste of passion (with the Bumble date who ghosted me) after many, many years of nothing at all, and now I wanted more. I felt sexy, but I also had a hole in my face, so I took selfies then drank coffee on the beach and wrote about how miserable I was. Such a cliché.

Cut to a year later and I’ve been spoiled for passion. I’ve been to Italy where I drank Prosecco in Casanova’s bar and rode through Bologna in a tiny black dress on an electric bike. I’m having an intense love affair with a wild Glaswegian, straddling two countries, dancing across the border between England and Scotland trying to work out who I am and what the hell I am doing.

One morning I’m looking in the mirror, and I notice a waxy bit of skin on my forehead. It’s a bit bumpy and shiny and it looks just like the cancer I had on my cheek. I wear sunscreen in the scant Northumbrian sunshine, but it turns a bit pink as the weather gets warmer and I know I need to sort it out.

This time, when I go to my hospital appointment, life is better in some ways, and worse in others. I am madly in love, but this means I want to keep looking sexy and pretty, not have wounds all over my face. I’m also in a horrible legal situation that is one of the most stressful things I’ve had to handle, and I’m still being fucked around by the local authority and juggling four daughters on my own. So once more, as I sit in the hospital, I cry. The consultant dermatologist looks at me with concerned eyes and asks me if I’d prefer to delay the biopsy. I try to explain how hard it was for me to get to the appointment and find childcare for my daughters but I’m still crying, and I know I don’t look like a woman who is fully in control of her life. I suppose I’m not. I likely have more cancer on my head, and to make it worse, the consultant looks at a suspicious mole on my cheek and tells me it is a suspected melanoma, which is definitely NOT a good cancer. I cry a bit more and tell her I can’t have melanoma because I have four children, even though I know that’s not how life works.

By the time I have these two biopsies I’ve stopped crying, and the two nurses looking after me are hilarious. We talk about ex-husbands being arseholes and why single mums are amazing, and I’m hopeful that I might not die quite yet. This time, I am going home to my boyfriend, who has travelled all the way from Glasgow to look after my kids while my face is sliced into once more. He picks me up from the station after the appointment in the city and when I cry and ask him if he will still love me if I have a hole in my head he tells me he will probably love me even more, which is the right answer.

A week later, a phone call from the hospital. The weird blue mole is not melanoma, so I won’t die from that at least. But the big waxy mark on my forehead is a not-so-bad cancer, and it will need to be taken out. The consultant puts me on an urgent list, because it’s a fast growing cancer, although I don’t find this out for several more months.

I’m living in Scotland by the time my operation date comes round. Strategically it is very challenging to get this cancer cut out of my head. I have to be in Newcastle at 8.45am and two of my daughters have to be at school in Glasgow at 8.45am. Another daughter requires full time care and my oldest daughter is also floating about and must be thought about, if not actually looked after. My boyfriend tells me he will sort everything out and, not for the first time, I don’t recognise this feeling of being able to rely on a man. I keep wondering if it is a mirage and if this love will shimmer in front of my eyes then disappear without a trace. I sit on his knee the morning I have to leave and he stares into my face. Looks too hard at my forehead and I tell him not to because I’m trying not to think about how he will look at my forehead when I come back.

My friend shows up for me in the best way. Books us a hotel room, and after I’ve travelled down on the train we strut about in the hotel gym, eat Greek food and fall asleep laughing.

The next morning, we arrive at the hospital full of optimism and I’m keen to get on with it. I’m slightly embarrassed to see the same consultant I cried in front of calling my name, and stand a bit taller, smile a bit harder so she doesn’t think I’m a wreck. I perch on the edge of the bed and the Sikh doctor tells me I can get a turban or a bindi to cover up the wound. Isn’t that culturally inappropriate? I ask him. And he tells me no, people will love it.

The consultant wipes gel on my head, and I fleetingly remember all the pregnancy scans I’ve had. She peers at my head through a microscope and tells me she can’t easily see any cancer but it might be hidden under the scarring. She tells me I can just have my head monitored for four months, but the cancer might be growing quickly underneath. She tells me I could have radiation but I’m very young to have it and it might cause more problems. She tells me to take some time to make my mind up and get a cup of coffee with my friend.

I’m thrown by this development. I am geared up for the procedure and fairly happy to accept the inevitable scar on my face that will follow. But what if there is no cancer and I have the operation and I have a scar for no good reason? My friend, who is a doctor, googles my specific cancer and tells me that even though it will not kill me, it could spread quickly and cause problems. If I leave it and it does spread, I will have an even bigger wound to deal with in six months time.

I start crying in the hospital cafe. This place reminds me of the time my oldest daughter had Covid and couldn’t walk and we had to be there for nine days while my mum looked after my other daughters, and I was worried she would also get Covid and there was no vaccine. All of this, along with trying to decide whether to have cancer cut out of my head, is making me cry. My friend jumps up and buys me a large coffee. I have pen marks on my forehead to show the surgeon where she will cut into my skin and I am wailing. I ask my friend what will happen if I want to get married next year and I have a hole in my head. I have never said this out loud before - the thought is coming from somewhere deep in my psyche and I will laugh about it later. But for now it’s not funny, and my friend is kind enough to reassure me that I can still have my imaginary wedding even with a hole in my head.

I phone my boyfriend and he is more worried about me than I am so he’s not very helpful. I end the call. After more googling and a cup of coffee I know that the right thing to do is to have the procedure and get over myself. So that is what I do.

It takes over six more hours to cut out the supposed cancer, test the cells, cut out a bit more in the middle to be sure (so it was the right decision to go ahead, phew), test that bit, and then sew my head up again. It’s a procedure called MOHS, for anyone who is interested. It’s amazing actually. If you have a Basal Cell Carcinoma on your face, this is probably the surgery you will have. My surgeon tells me while she sews me up that, in America, this type of surgery is the best paid because they can do the anaesthetising themselves too. It’s all done under a local anaesthetic while the surgeons and nurses chatter above my head in the glare of a very bright light.

Finally, just before 5pm, it’s finished. There is no cancer left in my head, only a stitched-up wound running from my hairline to just below halfway down my forehead, all covered with a huge plaster. I put on a grey beanie hat gifted to me by a sweet friend and am grateful it’s cold outside. I’m going back that evening to my family in Glasgow with my sore head and it’s a long train journey but I just want to get home.

Four hours later I walk through my front door and the house smells of cooking. I’m starving. I eat spaghetti bolognese while my boyfriend reads The Hobbit to my younger daughters. I take paracetamol and ibuprofen, climb into bed and fall asleep almost immediately.

The next day is not too bad. He takes the kids to school so I can rest. I walk along Great Western Road to the bridge with my often-quiet daughter to help her think of some ideas for writing about rivers. It’s only a ten minute walk, but on the way back I feel faint and am shuffling along like an old woman. I lie on the sofa and sleep while my daughter makes me cups of tea and feeds me shortbread biscuits. Keep taking painkillers even though my head just feels tight and weird, not really sore.

On Friday I manage to drive across the city to watch my littlest one sing festive songs with her school choir. It’s damp and windy, and Christmas light switch-ons are not very autism-friendly so I’m clinging onto a tense daughter, covering her ears when people are ordered to clap louder. I still feel ancient and creaky and it’s good to get home.

The next morning I have to take off the massive dressing on my head. I do not want to do this. I stand in the bathroom in my t-shirt and pants and peel the sticky dressing from my skin. A piece of bloody gauze is all that remains and I howl. My boyfriend walks in, cuddles me and tells me it is going to be ok, my head is not going to fall off. I tell him to go away, and I look at my head in the mirror as I pull the gauze away. It’s true, my head doesn’t fall off. And actually the wound is not as bad as I thought it might be. It’s a kind of comedy Frankenstein vertically stitched line, almost completely in the centre of my forehead. So at least it’s symmetrical.

I walk back into the bedroom and my boyfriend agrees it’s not bad at all. He doesn’t flinch and his eyes seem kind, so I’m hopeful he still finds me cute. But then, over the next half hour or so, my eyes slowly disappear into my face and the skin around the bridge of my nose swells up. I look like I have been punched. I do not recognise myself. You can’t tell when you put your glasses and a hat on, my boyfriend tells me helpfully, but I can bloody tell. I do not know who I am. I want my old face back. My big shiny clear forehead and my eyes that are my favourite bit of my face.

I know. It’s not serious. People manage worse things than a bit of not-bad cancer and a wound on their head. I know this. It’s why I called this piece Vanity and Vulnerability. I feel vain writing about it. A friend texted and told me it is not bad to be vain and I told her I know. But I don’t really. My face does not define me, but I do like it. I spent years not enjoying it as much as I should, and now I do, now I am only a couple of years away from fifty, I want to look at it and paint my eyelashes and gloss my lips and watch my boyfriend’s eyes soften when I walk into the room.

I tell my daughters over and over again that they are beautiful, but I hope they know I mean it in a holistic sense. Not that they are pretty. I don’t want them to be defined by their appearance any more than they already are as girls in a world that tells them they are worth more if they make themselves attractive to men. I’m confused about why I’m worried about my boyfriend not finding me sexy anymore when I don’t ever want to be with anyone who will consider me less than because I have a scar on my head. I spent the years following the end of my marriage running along the beach and swimming in wild waves in an attempt to stay strong. I tell my daughters that a strong body is more important than a sexy one. A thoughtful head is more important than a pretty one. My face does not define me, and yet…

The definition of vanity is ‘excessive pride in one’s own appearance’, so actually vain is not even the right word for what I am trying to understand. I am not excessively proud of my appearance. I just like it.

As I write this, eight days since the surgeon sliced into my head, my eyes are no longer puffy. My face mostly looks like me again. People look at me and glance up at my head with a confused look on their face before they remember it’s rude to stare. It’s not so tender now that I can’t wear a cap that casts a shadow over the wound, and on Saturday night I tried a Joni Mitchell thing with a scarf that was quite successful. But I am trying to lean into having a scar on my head because it means that I’m here. I’m lucky. I’ll be glad when it fades though.