RIHANNA (2017)
I WILL PREVIVE [The Book Of Baps] diary extract, 14 April 2017
HOMEGIRL HOUSE PARTY series (2017)
“Yesterday was quite draining. Everything is so exhausting! Generally mornings are good, followed by a 3 hour post lunch sleep, then the evening yuckiness comes on. And today I’m a week on from surgery, I can hardly believe it. Hip hop hooray!
It took me about 2 hours from taking a shower on a little plastic stool to a few torso selfies to clothes on to face on to hair done. Then I had to lie down to rest. I was due to see Team Plastic in the afternoon hence the scrub up.
I had my usual reality check in the hospital waiting room. I wasn’t really ready for it because I’d missed my siesta and was fairly vacant. The rugrats were “lively” so the wisest plan was to head up the back where they could be neither seen nor heard. So there I was doing absolutely nothing in my activewear clutching my bag o’ drains like a handbag. A beautiful woman about my age tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You look AMAZING by the way!” Which was so lovely but so wrong. She thought I had cancer, obviously. Why wouldn’t she? She’d spotted the drains. “I don’t have cancer!!!” I blurted in her face. Poor girl. I felt terrible because she obviously did and there was no coming back from that.
Then came her story. This was her third round of breast cancer, in the same place each time, and diagnosis at 31, 39 and 43. No family history, one expander. They had stuffed up her last tests and she was there for results. Her face said it all. I didn’t know her but I wanted to hug her and now I feel really blooming teary about her story. It made me think about the numbers for once and not the emotion: 1 in 8 women isn’t it? And that’s breast cancer alone. I thought about all the ripple effects far and wide from every woman diagnosed. So for all the diamonds out there and their day to day struggles, my next house guest is Rihanna. She shine like a diamond.”