I Dressed As Dolly Parton 1 Week Before My Double Mastectomy. It Wasn't Just A Costume. |
I Dressed As Dolly Parton 1 Week Before My Double Mastectomy. It Wasn't Just A Costume.
“As the evening unfolded, I began to appreciate something more meaningful than the obvious joke.”
One week before my double mastectomy, I stood in a friend’s living room wearing a platinum-blonde wig, fake eyelashes, a sequined mini skirt and two enormous pink balloons, which were masquerading as Dolly Parton’s breasts.
There was something wonderfully absurd about it because in seven days, surgeons would remove the breasts I’d lived with for 47 years and attempt to reconstruct them with silicone implants.
And here I was, voluntarily doubling down on the cleavage, singing off tune and bringing everyone in a makeshift karaoke house to their feet.
It wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined spending my last Halloween with my breasts.
Two days earlier, a Halloween costume had been the furthest thing from my mind. I was preparing for a risk-reducing bilateral mastectomy with immediate direct-to-implant reconstruction – trying to organise my family, my work, my home and the countless details that suddenly seemed urgent before I surrendered my body to surgeons followed by six to eight weeks of recovery.
My brilliant friend was hosting a Halloween karaoke party. Guests were instructed to dress as a musical artist, prepared to belt out their greatest hits in a raucous sing-along in her family room, which she transformed into a spooky Japanese-style karaoke box.
I hadn’t given my costume a moment’s thought. But I didn’t want to miss one of my last opportunities to let loose before surgery.
And then I thought of Dolly.
I’d spent the summer rediscovering Dolly Parton’s enormous catalog of music after news of her brief battle with cancer sent many into deep mourning and reflection. I found myself listening to Dolly Parton Radio on long weekend drives to the lake, belting out lyrics with my daughter, oblivious to my son’s eye-rolling in the backseat.
There was the original “I Will Always Love You,” “It’s All Wrong, But It’s All Right,” “Backwoods Barbie” and, of course, “Jolene” and “9 to 5.”
Along with a family history of breast cancer, there is considerable musical talent in my family. Much to my chagrin, I am not a talented singer by any reasonable definition. There is nothing I would love more than........