There are over 3.8 million breast cancer survivors in the United States.
In Eau Claire Wisconsin, a quiet man is manufacturing nipples. That’s nipples, as in one of the features of the human torso.
Years ago, one of my friends confided in me that of the many depressing aspects of her impending mastectomy, the loss of her nipple was going to be the most devastating. We are good friends, but I am acutely aware of when to comment, commiserate or be quiet; I kept quiet. But I thought of her when the Heartland Film Festival gave me the opportunity to see the Indiana premiere of the documentary Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory.
Several of my friends have gotten the same notification that Randi Johnson received when her doctor advised her that she had cancerous cells in her breast and would need surgery to remove it. Randy and her husband Brian, “a conservative Midwestern man,” comforted each other after her surgery, and through Randi’s breast reconstruction. One of the techniques employed in her reconstruction involved a pump that the couple found was prone to malfunction. Brian, a quiet and curious man, went to his local hardware store, bought a pump designed to function as an automotive device and fitted it to his wife’s breast pump. The device worked, and Randi’s doctor was amazed. But Brian was not finished with his search to find a way to ameliorate the devastation wrought by the cancerous cells that required the removal of his wife’s breast.
Randi told her husband that, though her breast had been reconstructed, it felt odd when she looked at herself in the mirror and saw only one nipple. Brian, the stolid, ministerial man, went on a quiet search for a solution. He visited his dentist, discussed the materials used to make dentures, took home some of the powder and stared mixing a paste. He made a mold of his wife’s remaining nipple and after some trial and error, developed a “pasty” that she could apply, a tiny but realistic prosthetic nipple. The dentist was as amazed as Randi’s doctor, and Brian developed color swatches and a molding kit for the women who became his clients.
Randi and Brian have five children, and none of them knew that their parents had an underground nipple factory. When they learned of the enterprise, the five had varying responses. The factory was in what had been one daughter’s bedroom, and when she and her husband visited in later years, she joked that they would have to sleep in “the nipple room.” One son, as grave and religious as his father, grappled with the fact that Dad was manufacturing something which was to be attached to a part of the female anatomy that would be an intimate part of “(his) future wife.” But Brian noted in his narrative that breast cancer is “a couple’s disease,” something that affects both the woman and the man. His “problem solving” extended to the development of a color chart for the varying complexions of his clients.
The couple’s story was filmed and narrated by their oldest son; four other children sit on a couch and tell of their varying degrees of amazement about their father’s quiet enterprise and their mother’s delightful complicity in it. It ends with heartfelt testimonies of gratitude from some of the women who have benefited from Brian’s healthy and healing prosthetic.
Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory can be seen at the Living Room Theaters on Saturday, October 14th at 2:45 p.m. as part of the Heartland Film Festival. Visit heartlandfilmfestival.org to get tickets.
cjon3acd@att.net