I, Robot

Lydia Stamps Photography

We’ve been staying with my Dad (Sainted, Sainted, Chief of All Saints) for a while now. For matters of convenience and loveliness mostly, and the small fact that car journeys make me want to vomit, but mainly for reasons of loveliness. 

I’m not sure if it’s because there are more mirrors here, or they are in places where one actually look in them (a mirror I wouldn’t look in!), or if it’s because our flat is smaller, so there, you can’t get so far away from them, for a more ‘overall’ look. At Dad’s they seem to be hung perfectly and I’ve discovered that from the waist up, my body looks like a battle field. More so now I have my PICC line in.

When I was little I remember Brother, painstakingly plotting, designing and executing vast battle grounds in our bedroom. Duvets, pillows, stuffed animals became landscapes for Lego, StarWars, Transformers and the odd Ninja Turtle to do battle over. Brother was quite advanced, I remember one such scene-scape actually having a soundtrack.

If it wasn’t so Avant Garde and frankly, creepy, I’d strip to the waist, lie on the floor and allow many a Lego battle to use this scarred and beaten ground to do there worst. I feel I’ve been doing that a lot lately, for any medical practitioner who wants.

There’s the red scars beetling their way across my armpit and left breast - thin, precise, skilled but angry looking and out of place, to me, having lived without them for 34 years.

There’s also the lack of symmetry, I find it far from pleasing. I’ve been giving it some thought and the only way to describe it is thus; imagine a marble bust, imagine a chisel aimed at 45 degrees at the bottom of the Busts bust. Now take that stroke. That is my left breast. Again perfectly rendered, skilfully done but not the body I’ve been used to for number of years now. Topped with an as yet still blue nipple - faded like a loved pair of jeans but blue enough to be Extra-Terrestrial.

I am feeling a certain kinship to the Mavel Comic Heroes. Iron Man or Captain America especially, thanks to the new PICC line. It’s a tube that leads from a vein in your arm to inside your chest cavity - about 2 feet of tube FYI. It’s clever and disturbing (let’s just say I’ve also been feeling for Wolverine of late) how they how they insert it. It helps preserve your veins from the rigours of Chemo but subtle it ain’t, unless you like the stares of small children, long sleeves are a must. Which is annoying because I have a lot of weddings to attended this summer.

So I say Yes to Battlefields, wars waged inside and out, I believe, according to someone in the 80’s Love is a Battlefield also. I can tell you, I think it takes a certain, strong kind of person to tell you, you are beautiful while one is dealing with all this (or even be prepared to lie about it). I’m frickin’ lucky with the Iron Men in my life, I’m too vain to do it without them.

Side Note - Chemo 1 is done. I don’t want to talk about it at the moment.