The Catherine Deveney Interview: Nicola Dames: All Woman

Summary

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IN HER job as an intensive-care nurse, Nicola Dames had done everything for her patients. There was no part of the human body that was a mystery to her; no task from which she flinched. But lying in the high-dependency unit herself after major surgery to remove her colon, she felt repulsed by her own body. She could not look at the clear stoma bag that had been fitted to collect the waste products from her digestive system. It was ugly. The nurses soothed her as once she had soothed others. "Nicola," they told her, "you don't have to look at it. You're not ready to look at it. We'll deal with it."

On the tenth day after her operation, the floodgates opened. She cried and cried, a process of grieving for the person she had left behind in the operating theatre and coming to terms with the one she now was. We are more than our bodies. But our bodies are the physical manifestation of who we are, the only concrete way we see ourselves. It was hard at the age of just 29, and only one year married, to know that the normally concealed processes of digestion and excretion would now be highly visible. Her husband Simon had brought in some music for her to listen to. She thinks maybe James Blunt was enough to give anyone a relapse but by the time she reached 'You're Beautiful' she was inconsolable. Look at her! She would never be beautiful again. She would never wear jeans again, never be sexy again.

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The Catherine Deveney Interview: Nicola Dames: All Woman

There's a science to sex. Sexuality is programmed in the human hard drive and some of our responses are instinctive, some are learned, some are spontaneous and some controlled. The interesting question is how much love can influence instinctive sexual attraction. If a partner's face is destroyed by acid, if their body is horrifically burned in a fire, does love alone continue to fuel physical desire? Or what about less extreme cases - excessive weight gain, for example? There are, in life, certain things we say because we want them to be true rather than because they are. For instance, 'appearances don't matter'. For instance, 'I'll love you no matter what'. Most of us don't have to prove it.

ONE CORNER OF the bright, spacious sitting-room of Nicola Dames's tenement flat in Glasgo...

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