I’m in the waiting room for my pre-op assessment. Looking around me I recognise a number of faces from recent trips to the breast clinic. In a few days’ time a man is going to lop off one of my tits. I’m not looking forward to this. In fact it takes all my strength to hold back from running around screaming. I look at the other women and I wonder at how many tits get chopped off each year and where do they all go. I guess there’s no way to recycle them.

I like my tits. I waited an awful long time for them to grow, I was a late developer. There were times I had to avoid moments when a boy’s wandering hands might discover a lack of anything to grope. At school in summer I would delay the wearing of the flimsy uniform summer school blouse for fear of boys realising I had no bra strap to twang. When my tits finally did grow they quickly caught up with lost time and I proudly got them out at any occasion – appropriate or not. If you have any recollections of a girl taking to the stage at a Tiswas roadshow in Norfolk and pulling off her T-shirt then that was probably me.

Tits are celebrated. We may not always approve of their prominence but they are there, on Page Three, in gossip magazines, in movies, Tits are all around.

Now here’s something strange. I consider the lopping off of my tit to be an act of mutilation, a necessary one, but mutilating nonetheless. However, if I express my fear and horror at the imminent loss of my left boob – that’s the one bearing Belinda the massive tumour in case you’ve forgotten – then I get very odd reactions from women. They tell me I will be able to look at my scar and see it as a sign of how alive and brave I am. Piss off! I am certain I will see it as a sign that cancer stole my breast and a little bit of my femininity. When I respond in this way it is then suggested that I should just feel lucky that I am alive and that surely I should be eager to get that cancer cut out of me. I should swathe myself in pink and announce that I am going to “kick cancer’s butt!”. Yeah right. I try to keep schtum and let these pronouncements wash over me.

The phone rings the evening after my pre-op appointment. An ex-boyfriend who I dated back in university, has clocked on to the fact that I’ve got cancer. He probably saw one of my ever-popular Facebook posts (see my entry on Being Liked on Facebook). “Shit Pen, what’s happening to you?” I tell him that I am shortly to join the ranks of the world’s Uniboobers. And what does he say? Does he tell me that I am going to “beat this”, does he suggest I wear pink and walk bravely on? No, for once someone says what it is. “Christ Penny, that’s a tragedy, you had the best Tits in College”.