My silicon implants feel like two permanent ice packs

Like every good Jew, I have diagnosed myself with various ailments and syndromes over the years. My longest-standing, never-confirmed self-diagnosis is Raynaud’s, which exhibits on the body through numb or tingling extremities that turn blue-white and then dark red. On the plus side, this diagnosis is calming: every time I almost diagnose myself with a new case of frostbite, I remind myself of my earlier self-diagnosis of Raynaud’s. No reason to panic!

All the months that pious Jews are saying ‘mashiv ha’ruach umorid hageshem,’ the prayer for wind and rain, I find myself in a cold war with my husband over the thermostat

But all of this is to say, I have never been good with the cold—despite being raised in a time when winters were really winters, and Canadian winters were really really winters. Even in the midlands of the UK—where it rarely goes below freezing—I suffer more than half the year. Essentially, all the months that pious Jews are saying “mashiv ha’ruach umorid hageshem,” the prayer for wind and rain, I find myself in a, cough, cold war with my husband over the thermostat.

So, you can’t imagine how outraged I was to learn that I have been fitted with a permanent, portable ice pack. Everywhere I go, it goes, in the nature of Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi (“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay”). It exists to keep winter with me at all times, to keep it, dare I say, close to my heart.

 Believe me, I have it worse than those women with cosmetically enhanced breasts. My bags of cold gel having nothing to insulate them

It’s not as though, when I had my reconstructive surgery, I thought implants would feel like real boobs. Clearly, I’ve seen enough Hollywood films and been on the boardwalk in Miami’s South Beach enough times to recognise that there is little “real” about rubber bags of silicone gel. But who knew they sit on the chest like an icepack? Like you’ve injured your ribs and bound an icepack to your chest—eternally? And believe me, I have it worse than those women with cosmetically enhanced breasts. My bags of cold gel having nothing to insulate them. Those women endured two neat little incisions, and then their gel bags were nestled into warm, fuzzy breast tissue, like chicks under their mama hen’s soft, feathery rump. Me, I had to have every last fibre of breast tissue scooped out, the skin scraped down to a thin layer, each implant then inserted like a marble in a plastic baggie.

There was no choice to do otherwise. Because what if we’d missed a few quiet cancer cells hiding in the cosy fat? What if those unobtrusive cells started inviting their friends, and they their friends and neighbours, including the truants and wild ones, and the ones who play the drums or the trumpet, and next thing you know you have a party going on in there, and no matter the signs calling for silence and the librarian shushing everyone, there’s no containing the chaos now.

Well, you get my point.

So, I’ve started wearing ribbed cotton vests (I’ve turned into my dad?!) and tucking my hands inside my undershirts or my bra, if I’m wearing one, cupping my breasts like a girl who’s just developed buds and is excitedly reminding herself of their existence. I’ve taken to pressing a steaming cup of tea against my chest, which is a terrible idea; although it radiates cold, my chest lacks sensation and can easily be burned without my noticing. The nerve endings have been cut, like electrical wires before they reach the outlet.

But yesterday a friend going through the menopause complained about her night sweats. I, too, have been going through the menopause thanks to my monthly injection of Zoladex, which stops my ovaries from making estrogen. “I’m tempted to go to bed with an ice pack,” she declared. “I could wrap my arms around it and press my face against it and maybe, maybe be able to sleep through the night!”

Ah…maybe these implants will come in handy, after all.