Unbreakable: My New Autobiography (13 page)

The T-shirt says it all.

I
t’s fair to say that Ozzy’s regard for his health has been limited to non-existent over the years, so we have often wondered what the future might hold for him. Then, in 2011, we got the chance to find out when a company called Knome got in touch to offer him a genome test.

In layman’s terms, this ‘determines likelihood of trait expression and disease risk’ and, at the time, cost around $250,000 per person. But they said they would give it to us for free if they could publish Ozzy’s results. It was a no-brainer because, given his very public, rather colourful life, he had nothing to hide, so we said yes immediately. Even better, they then offered it to me too.

They came to Welders, took three phials of blood from each of us and then we had to wait three months for the results. To be honest, I didn’t give mine much thought during that time. My father had suffered from Alzheimer’s, so I was interested in finding out the likelihood of my getting it too, but other than that, the focus was on Ozzy who, we assumed, would discover he’d done all manner of damage to himself with years of drink and drug abuse.

When the day came, a small silver box arrived with
Gnothi seauton
engraved on it: Greek for ‘Know thyself’. Inside was a memory stick embedded in a foam casing, and on it were over three hundred test results. Thankfully there was an accompanying letter, because most of the medical data swam before my eyes. They also called us, just to flag up anything they felt might be of concern.

Astonishingly, Ozzy had fuck all to worry about. There was something about being allergic to dust, coffee and, surprise surprise, alcohol. But nothing serious at all. Then it came to my results.

I had two of the four genes that make you prone to Alzheimer’s, which gave me a fifty-fifty chance of getting it. This was terrifying news for me because I had seen what it did to my father. It was a horrible way to go, something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But even though I couldn’t do anything about it, I was glad that I knew, so that I could look for any telltale signs and prepare those around me as to how,
if
I got it, it might progress.

I forget things now. I can be halfway up the stairs and forget what on earth it was I was looking for, and I’m always losing my car keys. But this doesn’t worry me because I know that everyone does things like that when they get older. I know Ozzy does. The crucial signs I will look out for are the things that happened to my father: forgetting the names of people really close to you, even those in your actual family, and having small panic attacks because certain images and words are just flashing in and out of your brain.

My father would have terrible anxiety attacks, but I don’t know exactly when they started because, for so many years, we were estranged. I only came back into his life after he’d been diagnosed, and by that time he would only ever talk in short sentences, nothing in-depth. So I don’t know how many of the Alzheimer’s genes he had, or when the disease first started to take hold. All I know is that I have a higher chance than most of getting it.

Meanwhile, I had another serious issue to think about. The test showed that I had the gene for colon cancer, which I already knew, but it also said that I had one of the specific faulty genes linked to breast cancer.

Great. So my husband, who had caned his body all his life with God knows what substances, was probably going to get a telegram from the Queen one day, and
I
was the one with the health problems. I think that’s what they call Sod’s Law.

According to the NHS, in the UK a woman’s lifetime risk of developing breast cancer is ten per cent. Out of every hundred women, ten will develop breast cancer by the time they are eighty years old. It can affect anyone, even if they don’t have a faulty gene. Having a fault in one of the breast-cancer genes, as I did, raises the risk of developing breast cancer to between fifty and eighty-five per cent.

Just before getting this news, one of my breast implants had been driving me insane. I’d had them put in about three years before and they had never felt right. Now one was a completely different shape to the other, and it was drooping significantly. They were both bigger than I had ever wanted them, anyway, and I felt as if I had a waterbed on my chest. Be warned, all of you who think that implants will give you firm, perfect breasts for ever. They drop, just like breasts do anyway, but they drop even faster because of the weight. Few surgeons will tell you that.

As well as the right breast drooping, it was also getting really itchy underneath, right down to my ribcage. It would itch and itch all bloody day long. I just assumed it was eczema, even though I have never in my life suffered from it.

After getting the genome result, I went to see a breast-cancer specialist and also mentioned the itching. After studying my breasts, she said that she could tell something wasn’t quite right, that perhaps the right implant was leaking. A mammogram and ultrasound scan confirmed her diagnosis, showing a grey patch spreading from my breast down to my ribcage. There was a strong chance that, if it wasn’t dealt with, it could become infected.

It was a huge lesson to me. You think you can get away with mucking about with your body, searching for the perfect breasts… it’s always the breasts with us women, isn’t it? I did it my whole life out of vanity, and now I was learning that there’s a price for everything. The faulty gene is something you’re either born with or not, but the leak was my doing because I chose to have silicone implants. I started to look back over all the surgeries I’d had out of vanity and thought, What the fuck am I doing?

I had three options: leave things as they were for a while, then return every six months for a mammogram to see if there had been any changes; go in for surgery and just remove the implants; or go in for surgery and have the implants
and
my breast tissue removed and be done with it.

I didn’t think twice about it. I had three kids, and my first grandchild was on the way. For me, the double mastectomy was a very simple decision to make. They were coming off. My breasts had always been problematic for me because I was large-chested and they got on my nerves. The surgery had been about trying to reduce them, firm them up or stop them sagging, never about making them bigger. I didn’t want to go back every six months for tests, and there was absolutely no point getting new implants put in when I might end up having to take them out again for a mastectomy further down the line. So I said to myself, Fuck it, I don’t want to finish up looking like a patchwork quilt, I want them gone. I didn’t want that time bomb inside me. I didn’t feel the need to discuss it with anyone; it was totally my choice and I made it there and then.

When I got home and called the kids, they didn’t want me to do it straight away, they wanted me to think about it. And Ozzy didn’t really understand my reasons for doing it either. They were all pretty freaked out by it, to be honest. But when I made it clear that I was fine with it psychologically and that it was a preventative measure that meant I was less at risk, they were fully supportive.

Initially it was going to be two separate surgeries: six hours for the first, where they remove the implants and breast tissue, then, a few months later after you’ve healed, there’s a seven-hour procedure for the aesthetic side of things.

But the first operation, in January 2012 at St John’s hospital in Santa Monica, took thirteen and a half hours. It turned out that the silicone had leaked into my stomach wall, and it took the surgeon all that time to pick it out. Hours and hours to sort out the mess. And for what? My fucking vanity. I am so against silicone breast implants now, and would urge any woman not to have them. They’re revolting.

Then, after the stomach wall had been cleaned up, they put temporary, saline-filled implants in, just to stretch the skin.

Meanwhile, Kelly was at the hospital, anxiously waiting for me to emerge from surgery and fielding increasingly panicked calls from the others. So when, after six hours, there was no news, they started to think that something had gone terribly wrong and I wasn’t coming back.

When I was finally brought up, so Kelly later told me, I was howling like a wounded animal; I have no recollection of this. Then I just cried and cried and cried, going on and on about my father or just talking complete gibberish. I think it was a reaction to the extra anaesthetic I’d needed to be kept under for longer. Either way, it was very scary and distressing for her.

I came out after five days, and was under strict instructions to rest. As our house in Hidden Hills was quite a long drive and I couldn’t face the journey, I took the decision to stay at our one-bedroom apartment in Sierra Towers, which we used for occasional overnights in LA if we were working there late. It was also several degrees cooler in town and, after the op, I was even more sensitive to heat than I usually am.

I have long had issues with excessive sweating, at night especially. It goes back to when I had the colon cancer and had to have chemo. They said my periods would probably stop, and I thought the sweating might be part of the menopause. But in the end, my periods carried on then petered out when I was about fifty-five.

I certainly wasn’t aware of the menopause when, or indeed if, it came; I had no symptoms other than the sweating, which I still get. Sometimes I wake up in the morning with a lake on my chest, so I like to have the bedroom really cold, while Ozzy likes it to be warmer. I often think about crossing the hallway to the cooler spare bedroom, but rarely have the strength to do so.

So, post-mastectomy, I had a bed to myself at Sierra Towers and the air-con on full blast. But after the first day I fainted on my way to the bathroom. Luckily, as well as Ozzy, my housekeeper Saba was with me, thank God. She took me to Cedars-Sinai hospital, which was the nearest, where they ran some tests. It turned out that I had a critically low iron level, so I had to stay there for the next five days to get the level up, then return for weekly infusions until it had stabilised. The bag of iron was so thick that it took two to three hours to put in. You can’t just do it through a syringe, and you have to get the proportions right or it can be dangerous.

Once I was home and healing, it still took me ages to get over the anaesthetic. I wasn’t in any pain from the operation, as such, just discomfort. But I was so woozy. I would be fine in the morning, then about lunchtime I would start nodding off.

I took two weeks off straight after the operation, then went back to doing
The Talk
. I didn’t say anything on air about the operation, but the girls all knew about it so they were able to keep an eye on me. They were so kind. Everyone rallied round to make sure I didn’t get too tired.

After about three months, when everything from the first operation had settled down, I went in for the second, which took the expected time of seven hours. First of all they removed the saline implants and fitted two nets inside my breasts. Then, while I was still under, they took body fat from my stomach area and put it into some sort of spinning machine. Usually if you inject fat into the body, it eventually dissipates, but apparently this spinning process helps it to stick to the netting. When I came round I was totally bandaged up, right across my chest, then fitted with a strong elastic bra with a zip up the front. I felt trussed up, but in a secure rather than uncomfortable way. After searching all my life for the ‘perfect’ breasts, I felt nothing but relief that they’d been removed. Not just because of the health issues, but because I just didn’t have to think about them any more.

When Angelina Jolie had her double mastectomy, she made a point of saying that she didn’t feel defeminised by it. That was an important thing to say, because I know that a lot of women do feel that way after the operation. But I didn’t feel defeminised by it at all. I’m sixty, my kids are grown up and, for me, it just didn’t feel like a big deal. But if someone like Angelina – in the prime of her life and such an exotic, mysterious, beautiful, physically
perfect
woman – can make such a huge decision and feel OK about it, that’s a great message to put out there.

We’re just lucky that medicine has come on in such leaps and bounds that we even
have
this preventative option. It wasn’t that long ago that no one ever got an early warning; they only found out when it was too late.

When I had the colon cancer, it had gone into my lymph nodes. That is something I still have to keep an eye on because if it flares up again it can spread easily. So I go for a check-up once a year. I also check myself regularly for lumps, but other than that, I feel very calm about it all. I just get on with it. Ozzy gets more uptight about it than I do. He got to grips with all the medical detail in the end, but it only panicked him, so I steer away from in-depth conversations about it. Besides, I’m at an age now where I know what’s best for me and I’m just going to do what I’ve got to do. My family can have a view if they wish, but ultimately it’s my decision.

I think about all the women who aren’t lucky enough to be in my position, who don’t have the knowledge that the genes they’re carrying might heighten their risk of getting breast cancer, and I consider myself to be very fortunate indeed. I have minimised the risk and I now have far smaller breasts made from my own body fat that feel much more comfortable. I barely even think about them now.

Once the scars from the second operation had healed, I went in and had a couple of nipples tattooed on, purely for aesthetic purposes. It was nothing, because I couldn’t feel it being done anyway. It’s something they encourage, just so that your new breasts resemble the old ones as much as they can. But to be honest, with or without nipples, when I looked in the mirror I was absolutely fine with what I had, and still am.

Now I sometimes go out in a dress or a kaftan and I don’t wear a bra. It’s so liberating, as I have never been able to do that before. Also, as I’m short, smaller breasts suit my shape much better. I wake up in the mornings and feel somehow lighter, unburdened by the thought of yet another mammogram looming and what they might find.