The small top left drawer of my dressing table contains a tangled mess of bras and various bits and pieces that go with them, like transparent plastic straps for wearing under a revealing dress (can’t think of the dress I had in mind; never worn), extenders to take account of extra poundage; bras worn when thinner; bras from the early 1990s, hardly worn, not very comfy but too pretty or far back in the drawer to throw out. Whenever I’ve had the luxury, I’ve had separate drawers for the underwear triumvirate: bras, knickers, socks, descending in that order, with that sense of importance. And now, suddenly, no need for the bra drawer. I have a flat chest! There’s nothing there but two angry red stripes! Even when the reconstruction process is complete, my silicone bosom will be a never-sag job. I may never need to wear a bra again. They’re still there, for now – a tangled mess of straps and lace and underwire and comfy options – but when they go, I get a whole empty drawer. I could use that drawer for… hmmm … hankies? Imagine a whole drawer of hankies. I only own two or three cloth hankies. No. Maybe bathers. My three swimming costumes (two too small) could stretch out in a drawer of their own. I know! Pajamas! Pajamas can have their own drawer! For most of my adult life pajamas have been a big old t-shirt and knickers but since my two operations I’ve garnered a full winter set (ovaries out last winter) and a summer set (breasts off this summer).

In the meantime, I still have two drains coming out of my midriff. I’m over them now. Get out of here. Still at least a couple of days’ worth, though. I’m itchy and uncomfortable but feeling good, just wanting to stop being sick person and start being sick enough to keep slouching around at home but not well enough to get out and do anything too taxing. Actually this is a good zone, doing sweet F.A.

To paraphrase Monty Python, I no longer have breasts; I have ex-breasts. The area that used to be inhabited by my breasts is completely numb. Numbness is strange. It’s not just an absence of feeling, it’s much more active than that. Much more present. So my chest is in a very present state of numbness. Each breast has been reduced to a red horizontal line about three or four inches long. The skin is a bit baggy, waiting to be pumped up from behind by sacks of saline, to be replaced at some point by sacks of silicone. Under the horizontal lines I have plastic tubes emerging from my body, two on each side. These long plastic tubes – they’re like small versions of the tube Dad would use to siphon petrol out of a petrol tank – terminate in four bulbs that look like toy hand grenades. They look so like hand grenades that Dr French even described them thus. When I was still in hospital, one of them actually exploded! There was blood everywhere! Nurse after nurse, as she came on shift, would examine my faulty grenade and add more sticky tape to it. Then there’d be a loud, industrial sort of squealing noise as it died, or a silent popping and leaking of its contents and another call to the nurse and more sticky tape. Eventually we were able to get someone to give us a new grenade and there have been no problems since. The colour of the fluid in the tubes is a little bit like the colour of petrol. The same sort of air bubbles.

Anyway, I’m back at home now, nicely set up on the couch. Every six hours we’re measuring the contents of the grenades and squeezing them out into a stainless steel bowl, then emptying the brilliant red dye into the toilet and flushing. And recording the measurements in a Numbers spreadsheet that Steve has set up on the iPad.

I’m taking it easy here, surrounded by i devices. There’s Apple TV, the iPad, the iPhone, a Macbook Pro. There’s a Kindle, too. I’m sure Steve Jobs lay round dying of cancer with devices just like these.

I don’t have cancer. Now that I’ve had my tits off, I’ll never have breast cancer (unless there’s one stray cell that has decided to be very, very mean). Take that, BRCA1!

There’s lots of other “stuff” around this, not just bright pinky orangey reddish fluid leaking out of my midriff. The whole thing has brought up “issues” – the things that counsellors love. I can almost feel counsellors across the land prick up their ears, lean forward. Look at all these issues that have risen to the surface, like scum! Look at ’em all! I’d love to enumerate them here but there’s a red light flashing on the horizon. It’s saying, “Don’t overshare, even though you are feeling weak and are surrounded by i devices.”

So I won’t.

Anyway, overall, everything has gone very smoothly. I’m back at home with Labradors reposing at my feet, a gentle fan over my head, someone to run and get things if I so much as call.