So Saturday a couple of friends wished to visit and go out to lunch. This is my first exposure to live humans who are not nurses, volunteer babysitters, or my hapless son. I’ve got to figure out what to wear that will accommodate the Grenade Sack and not look too, TOO bizarre. And I ain’t got many candidates….
I rarely wear button-up-the-front shirts. It’s too warm in the winter for flannel hunter-type shirts like we used to wear when we were young hippies. And in the summer…if you could go without a shirt at all, you would. Plus I wish never to iron again. Consequently, almost everything I have amounts to pullover T-shirts or various fancified equivalents.
Furthermore, I live in Costco jeans. It looks a great deal to me like fitting the bulky waist of Your Grandma’s Jeans under the Grenade Sack (which holds the grenade-shaped pumps for the Jackson Pratt drains) is going to be hugely problematic. And where the damn drains are concerned, I wish to avoid “problematic” at all costs.
Complicating matters, the sky has clabbered up, it’s cold, and it’s starting to rain. The few shirts I have that do button are cotton.
I decide to put on an old pair of stretchy yoga pants, which I haven’t worn in years. Run them through the dryer to shake out the accumulated closet dust and ambient dog hair.
Top? Oh god. Maybe an old, warm sweatshirt that I got at a tourist attraction about 15 years ago?
Decide I can NOT cope with a bulky thing that has to be pulled over my head. Also, I don’t think it will cover my tush, which no one in their right mind (or who wishes to retain their right mind) would want to see beneath the yoga tights. Ugh.
Finally in the back of an unused closet I find this white 3/4-sleeve smock thing that I picked up at B’Gauze, also years ago. It’s cotton. It is NOT warm. But it’s as long as a short dress (I think it was marketed as a “jacket”) (can not BELIEVE i bought this thing!). It looks like a big, flowy, floppy, ill-conceived artist’s smock. BUT…. It’s loose fitting. It covers the Grenade Sack. And it’s easy to put on and take off.
Problem is, the thing is white. The Iron Maiden and the Grenade Sack both show through it. Curious eyes will be awed and delighted.
It occurs to me that if I can get into one of my favorite Costco camis, it might provide some camouflage. And indeed this works: the cami does disguise the hardware. However…these are the old CC camis with a shelf bra, and the elastic band stretches right straight across the incision. Not good.
However, I’d bought a package of the new Costco camis, which do NOT have a shelf bra. Now that I have nothing to jiggle, I figure maybe I can wear these. I hope.. So I break through the consumer-proof packaging (it only takes ten minutes to unwrap the damn things), take out the off-white one, and very….very…VERY gingerly slide it on.
Damned if it doesn’t work. It not only doesn’t hurt, because it sort of secures the effing drain as it passes out of the Frankenstein torso into the Grenade sack, it seems to feel…uhm. “pretty good” is not the operative term, but “OK” would do.
And lo! It does hide all the junk (well…most of it), and it does not bind across the chest. The fabric, by the way, is MUCH softer and silkier than the old Costco camis. Once the incisions are fully healed, these things may actually feel very nice as undershirts. There are some possibilities here…i hope.
So. Here’s my first fashion statement of 2015…
Yrs in continual spectacularness,
—Twiggy
There must be magazines that would buy your fashion snark. AARP or something. I’m amused at all times.
It’s amazing that a good rooting around in the back of a woman’s closet will eventually uncover clothing to cover every situation.
Good on ya.
That’s pretty much the look I sport most of the time in warm weather. Not because of a mastectomy, but because I’m not particularly blessed in the boob department. Dark colors seem to leave even more to the imagination. I’m so glad to hear you’re doing well, and got a good pathology report. Yours in flat-chested-ness. Carol