When this is over….

….I shall take the kitchen scissors and cut my sturdy breast cancer bras into small pieces. I have two of these ugly, unglamorous garments, designed to come up fairly high under the arms and to support the areas that have had surgery.

Admittedly my Sturdy Bras are comfortable, if hideous, and so long as you don’t look at them too critically, do the job well enough. They have big elastic shoulder straps and too many hooks and eyes to fasten easily when you are barely able to move your arms backwards because of stitches and dressings.

The Gardener, with his large hands, struggled manfully to help with the fasteners, but it was rather telling that he failed to notice that on one occasion, we had managed to put the thing on inside out. After that, I turned it round, fastened it frontwards, and swivelled it into the right position.

I had to wear one day and night for several weeks. This was a trial, let me tell you, worse than trying to sleep in socks – it just doesn’t feel right.

Now I keep one of them exclusively for radiotherapy sessions. This will be the first to fall under the kitchen scissors. The felt tip pen marks come off onto it, and don’t wash out well, the slatherings of required moisturiser do it no favours either, so it always looks thoroughly shabby and disreputable. If I were to be run over by a bus, I know I would have to force myself to stay alive long enough to explain its horrible state to the paramedics. “It’s clean, it really is, it just looks grubby, honest….”

When this is all over, I shall treat myself to the prettiest lingerie I can afford. In the meantime, my unloved Sturdy Bras still have a job to do.