Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

A Love/Hate Relationship with Mrs Blobby

Let me tell you about Mrs Blobby. Unfortunately, she is close to my heart. Literally. Mrs Blobby sits on the left-hand side of my chest, my left breast prosthesis, my nemesis, my friend, the major player in our love/hate relationship.

She travels with me on holiday, she comes with me to work, and when we hit the pub, she is in her element. I swear she drinks as much as me. After a night out on the town, she feels extra heavy. So maybe she is full of booze after all. I have always suspected that she has found a way of sneaking a naughty red.

We have been together for nearly ten years, through emotional ups and downs, the inevitable daily grind, and some rather hilarious scenarios no-one in their right mind would have planned. You may wonder where I came up with the name. She needed to be called something. I just couldn’t go through life wearing a ‘nameless thing’, and anyway, Blobby resonated for some reason. ‘Mrs Boob’ just wouldn’t do, neither would ‘Mrs Tit’. Anyway, what is it with so many names for the lovely female anatomy located on a woman’s chest? Boobs, jugs, tits, melons, and norks. We can thank the Yanks for the term ‘hooters’ and ‘Brad Pitts’, which is cool rhyming slang a la the English vernacular. Now we have ‘the puppies’, ‘the girls’, ‘chesticles’, ‘bongos’, ‘juggernauts’, ‘lady lumps’ and heaven forbid ‘jiggly puffs’! And these are only the clean names.

The dictionary definition of Blobby – amorphous in appearance (check), particularly irregular (check), a lump that lacks definite shape (possibly), similar in shape to blobs (definitely). The name fits. Apparently, there is a sport called ‘Blobbing’. The blob being a partially inflated air bag on which a participant sits down on one end waiting to be launched into some water while another participant jumps onto the other end of the air bag from a high platform. That confirmed it. ‘Blob’ was the correct name, most apt because since losing my left breast to not one, but two cancers I have felt at times that I have been launched into the air, with no control over how or where I would land.

Two cancers? Who deserves two cancers? I won’t dwell on the ‘why me’ thing as I am a cup half full type of person. It happened and I dealt with it. Grade 4 Ductal Carcinoma in Situ along with Paget’s disease of the nipple. Really? Either way my tit had to come off. I can hear you ask, when is this story going to get funny? I mean, it’s a bit dismal hearing anyone’s cancer story. Apologies, but some context never goes amiss.

Now... let me go back to a time before Mrs Blobby came on the scene, when the pain was too great to wear a bra with a half-kilo silicone appendage on my chest... to a time where a ‘pre’ prosthesis was needed and trialled – just so that I would have a chest that looked even, because, let’s face it, no-one likes to see a lop-sided front. Through necessity Miss Blobby came into my life.

Miss Blobby was a round, foam, breast form. Light as a feather and made of that soaky-up stuff that allowed me to go swimming, and she did the job. Or so I thought, until the day Miss Blobby decided to make an unwanted appearance. I was teaching my class of little ones not long after my breast surgery. I had been assured by the experts at The Fitting Room (my local mastectomy store) that the foam breast form would be fine tucked into a tight singlet. So, being very new to this game of only having one breast, boob, tit, knocker, or melon, I gave Miss Blobby a go.

I tucked her into my singlet under a loose, soft shirt. Everything was going fine until I bent low to help one of the kids at his desk, when ‘plop’ – out she dropped right down onto a partially completed worksheet. Oh. My. God.

Two startled eyes looked up at me, as two quick hands picked her up and squeezed. I quickly snatched back Miss B. and shoved her behind my back. The little kid couldn’t contain himself.

“What was that Mrs K?”, the question asked as he tried to dive around my back to see what was in my hands. Oh. My. God. I could see an irate parent, me being hauled into the principal’s office, awkward explanations. How to get out of this one?

“Sit down,” I said, “and I will tell you. I had an exciting surprise planned for this afternoon and part of the surprise fell on your desk. No, you can’t see it again. It’s a surprise. But I can give you a hint. I know you love to play with water.” The kid jumped up yelling “Yay, waterplay,” and ran off to tell others, my breast form forgotten. Phew.

I went back to the experts the next day. Miss Blobby had to go. Actually, I tell a lie. She is still with me. But against her wishes she has been silenced and stitched into my swimming costume. So, she does get an outing every now and then.

Enter Mrs Blobby, and all that comes with her. She weighs half a kilo, is soft and squishy, has an appalling looking, poor representation of a nipple, and requires my total concentration to squeeze her through a small hole in the gauze fabric behind the cup of my bra to make sure that outwardly my tit doesn’t look upside down. And I have made that mistake. Not a pretty sight; which forms part of the love/hate relationship we have. I never wanted her. Who would? But we are stuck together so I guess it’s up to me to make the best of it. She’s the silent partner in all of this, but sometimes I swear Mrs Blobby has a personality all her own, and I am sure that she sets out to, ‘unravel’ me.

Like the time that I agreed, against my better judgement, to participate in The Fitting Room’s annual fashion parade, modelling (you guessed it), mastectomy bras. I was all healed and had formed a great relationship with that team of quiet, caring women who saw damaged, anxious women on an almost daily basis.

The shop featured magnificent lingerie and swimwear and was very popular, but their claim to fame was their unwavering devotion to women suffering from breast cancer. So, yes, I said, I would be their very first model for mastectomy bras. They were over the moon, but I just went into worried mode. I mean, let’s face it – I’m rather chubby. I felt heaps better when I found out that my best friend Pip said she would model bras for the ‘fuller figure’.

On the night, the bubbly flowed, and canapes were at the ready. Behind the scenes Pip and I (being the elder of the models) were given a disability bathroom as our dressing room. The younger and gorgeous models had to squeeze into a storeroom. Utter chaos with lingerie, props, mirrors and makeup, but a couple of wines later, we were all laughing, not caring about getting half naked in front of each other.

The time came for me to model my first bra. The boss lady checked Mrs Blobby and I and sent us out on stage to rapturous applause after the long intro about how mastectomy bras can still look sexy. I was pumped. The audience were so welcoming, and the photographer was kind to my best angles. I modelled another bra, then disaster struck.

It was time for me to showcase a see-through, white, lacy number with matching knickers. I had rushed out of the previous outfit, tripped over discarded clothes and props, got on the white ensemble then rushed to the stage entrance. Boss lady looked at me, aghast. One cup was empty! Mrs Blobby! I forgot to grab my left tit, which was sitting on the toilet seat! Oh. My. God.

It had to happen to me. Pip tells the story to this day, and she always laughs until her tears flow. We both do. It is so fabulous to have that one true friend to see you through something like this, and to have one with the same sense of humour is sublime. We still break up with mirth when I get out of a pool and squirt the water out of Miss Blobby just like I was playing the bag pipes. Pip was the first to laugh when I walked into the staffroom at school as the fruit salad was being prepared for our annual Christmas lunch; me with a large rock melon in my left hand saying, ”A pity I’ve only got one melon!”

But the best line I came up with and one that shocks people with its audacity (just before they laugh) is my one-liner, now famous amongst those who know me.

I had a very proper principal, who every day, sported an expensive suit and tie, was extremely well-spoken with flawless manners. He had been so kind and caring throughout my cancer journey and thought he would treat the senior team to a drink after work one day at a very upmarket café. There were six of us there. After a couple of wines, the conversation flowed and eventually landed on my health and how I was coping. He knew about the modelling night and was shocked at the story of Mrs Blobby being left on the toilet seat.

He knew about Miss Blobby making an appearance and had squirmed when I came clean about that one. I felt that he should know in case the kid said anything to his parents. He knew that I had a wacky sense of humour, and I secretly think he liked it, despite his outward formality, but I was his undoing that afternoon, in that café.

One of my colleagues asked, rather shyly, what it was like having a prosthesis. A whole host of responses shot into my head. I could have said that it’s bloody hot having silicone and latex sliding, sweat soaked. against my skin, or I could have said that it’s a bloody pain having to always wash it and keep it hygienic, or I even could have said that its weight drags, upsetting my posture and that I must work hard to remember to sit up straighter so that I don’t get a dowager’s hump. I obviously didn’t listen to myself because the old hag has set up house on the back of my neck – the cow.

I could have focussed on the negative, but me, being me, found the funny side. Instantly, the quip shot into my head and shoved those other thoughts right out. I turned to the group, smiled, and said, “It’s not too bad having a prosthesis. It means that my husband can still play with my tit, and I don’t even have to be in the room!”