I went swimming yesterday! It felt glorious to feel myself pull through the water, to feel myself as strong as before, even as I was trying to also heed the warnings of my physical therapist not to use my arms too much yet. But, oh, it felt so good to get my heart rate up, to feel my legs propel me forward. I made myself stick to the “easy” lane so I wouldn’t pull too hard with my arms, but at one point I felt so good I couldn’t help but do a flip turn and pull a hard 25 m crawl stroke to the other end.

Did I mention I’m one breast shy of last time I swam?

One of my first big fears about getting a mastectomy without reconstruction was swimming. Fear that something that felt so good would now feel awkward. I love swimming — in the lake in the summer, in mini-triathlons when the timing is right, and in the pool when it gets too cold and wet to love running in the winter. During the pandemic I got good rain gear and embraced all-weather running. So the return to lap swimming today was not just about post-surgery feeling good, but also returning to an old and familiar kind of exercise.

I used to swim for joy and exercise in college, then in Mexico, in San Salvador, in Washington DC and in Seattle’s YMCA and public pools. I can picture, with nostalgia, all of the pools and locker rooms I’ve frequented. Through the locker rooms, I could see myself becoming more comfortable in my body. Among women in other countries, with far less body hangups than we have here, I felt a first sense of ease. At the downtown D.C. YMCA, there was a sauna in the women’s locker room where everyone went naked. Going in the sauna in the winter after my swim felt like my treat to myself for first, exercising, and second and more importantly, becoming comfortable enough in my naked body to go in. (Also of note: the downtown Seattle YMCA has a great sauna in the women’s locker room, with a big sign on the door that says something like BATHING SUITS REQUIRED and every time I go it’s filled with every size, age and color of very naked women; I would love just the sauna, but the complete disregard for the sign makes it even better.)

And so one week post-op, when I was just starting to be able to reach my left arm up to help the right with shampooing, I got online and looked for a bathing suit. I figured I’d hold out on the high fashion Finnish one-breasted suits (at least for now) and just find something tolerable and two-breasted. I found many mastectomy suits that looked like they were designed for the gorgeous, large old ladies with little skirts on their bathing suits in the water aerobics. I found zero suits that looked like what I usually wear — the speedo style “racing” suits with X in the back so it’s easier to swim.

I eventually found an online store with a bathing suit that’s about half way in between the two, and I guessed I was a medium for the foam “swim breasts.” I put the suit on as soon as it arrived two weeks ago and told myself it was good enough. Still, the morning of my swim I put it on again before I left the house. Not for vanity (I mean, that too), but because I didn’t want to be distracted by an errant fake boob falling down to my bellybutton or — God help me — floating behind me in the pool. (Bless the woman who posted a picture after a big wave pulled her swim boob out of her bathing suit this summer. It was a selfie on the beach, and she grinned as she held up the sandy foam boob. Facebook has been helpful in this particular way — both the heads up on possibilities and the humor.)

I talked myself into going. I got in the pool with the lap swimmers and looked, with very little nostalgia, at the parents in the little pool with their toddlers. My kids were in school; I could swim! My range of motion was back. As far as I could tell, no one was scanning my chest to see if things looked exactly even across the front. As soon as I slipped in the water and started kicking, I felt free. I kicked, did a lot of breast stroke and back stroke, went back to kicking, and then sneaked in a few laps of crawl stroke. I am never fast, but I still love the swim.

When it was time to go I had to decide what to do about the showers. This Seattle public pool only has a shower room — no dividers or curtains or private areas to shower — and so I could either shower modestly in my suit or take it off. The only people who have seen my scar so far are my family and a couple doctors, so it felt strange for the next person to be a stranger at the pool. But I feel so glad to be 46 and not 16. I feel so glad to be over body shame posing as modesty. Well, of course I’m not over it, but it is so much smaller a force in my life than it once was. And so, off went my suit. The scar still feels private, so I sort of faced the shower wall, but I think they gray-haired lap swimmer, also naked in the shower at the Medgar Evars pool, was the first stranger to see my scar.

~~~

In her book about her experiences with breast cancer, The Undying, Anne Boyer writes:

It sometimes feels more painful to talk about having cancer than to have it. It feels more difficult to re-create the experience and impressions of an illness than to endure them. It is more trying to look into the scene from the center of the scene, to contort like that toward the true, than to turn one’s head and lower one’s eyes and get through as others have gotten through, accepting what’s told to them, hoping for the mercies of forgetting.

I would prefer to write about anything else… I would rather write about anything else, not only for fear of the pain of examining the pain, but also for fear of turning the pain into a product. I would rather write about anything else, not just for fear of telling the same story, but for fear that the “same story” is a lie in service of the way things are.

I am afraid that writing about swimming veers too close to a classic overcoming narrative, one that cancer survivors are expected to offer. But that is not what I want to do. Soon I will learn more, get more numbers, also know as results, which offer predictions for what comes next for me and my cancer-recurrence-prevention. That feels more painful to face. And telling you about my swim outing feels like writing cancer from the center of the scene — I am still in the middle of this being or becoming or removing or preventing relapse of whatever has become cancerous in me. It is hard to know if I am contorting toward true when each day is also just a day, with dishes and work emails and kids to pick up after school. Maybe I’m writing about swimming because writing about cancer is more painful. Maybe I’m writing about swimming because today I had this unexpected moment of joy, and that feels easier to write.

Speaking of joy: Ida and I got to hike in the beautiful Cascade Mountains this weekend!!