Tag: Diagnostic

Nine-Year Mammogram; or, “One is the Loneliest Number”

(Title image: Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash)

It happened again.

I had a mammogram last week, this one being nine-years-post-cancer.

It was the very first one since my original diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound that I went to alone, without my husband.

And I figured that by now it wouldn’t matter, that I felt positive enough about the process that I wouldn’t feel unsettled in the least. Especially since it hadn’t been very long since this year’s clinial breast exam by my oncologist.

But, dammit, it was freaky. I had an uneasy feeling about it mirroring the original visit nine years ago with the mammogram and ultrasound that revealed my tumor. I had gone alone then too, even though I had been panicky, telling myself that I just needed to get through the visit and then I could exhale again and have a good laugh about how I had worried about nothing.

Obviously, that’s not how things went. The mammogram had shown nothing (!) but the tumor was visible in the ultrasound. The ultrasound technician worked absolutely stone-faced…a bit TOO stone-faced, I had noted at the time.

The lights were low. She left the room to meet with the radiologist, and I sat there alone and getting progressively more uneasy. And when she returned with the doctor and he told me it was cancer, it felt like someone had poured me out of a jar and onto the floor.

Yeah, I know, I know. But still…
(Photo by Outcast India on Unsplash)

I struggled to text my husband and my mother, trying to get the news out as quickly as I could, as if to share the burden in an attempt to lighten it.

That, my friends, sucked.

And this time around, nine years later, even though I knew I was fine, that feeling of loneliness crept in again. I wanted to hold someone’s hand and talk about something else.

Most days I don’t entertain the possibility of this cancer coming back. I do feel positive about my future. So much has happened since my initial diagnosis; I’ve learned a lot about myself and my body and especially my mind, which I’ve practiced reigning in so that it didn’t drive me into a panic.

Yes, there have been positive things that resulted from having my world shaken up.

But never in a million years do I ever want to experience anything like that again. So every time I joyfully call myself a survivor and am so willing to tell anyone who’s willing to listen about my experience and how it has changed me, there is heavy part of the experience, the fear, the awareness of my mortality, even the loneliness of feeling so removed from the other members of my family.

Next time, I’m bringing my husband again.

Four Minutes of Hovering

Last week I had a 3-D mammogram. This scan marks a bit over five years since the diagnostic test that indicated I had a solid tumor on the outside of my left breast.

Heading into this appointment, I wasn’t particularly worried. Yes, I admit to having little heartbeat skips over “lumps” in my breast that aren’t really lumps: if you recall, I had felt something before my last oncologist visit; my doctor reassured me it was nothing.

I will never again hear the word “lump” and NOT think of cancer.

And because last August I’d had a chest MRI, a more sensitive scan than even a 3-D mammogram, it was HIGHLY unlikely that there was anything to be found in this mammogram.

But still, after the pictures were taken and the mammography technician left the room to consult with the radiologist, I got that all-too-familiar uneasy feeling.

WHY? I knew that the radiologist wouldn’t find anything. The technician practically said that out loud, since she was aware of my recent MRI.

But still.

I sat alone in the mammography room, breathing, looking at the clock on the wall and simply hovering. My attention was like a butterfly looking for a place to alight. I wasn’t holding my breath…but mentally, I had put the rest of my life on hold when the tech stepped out the door.

It took all of four minutes and the mammographer returned and gave me two thumbs up.

For four minutes, I had no plans for anything outside of the room I was in.

I breathed a sigh even though I had expected the good news. And while I wasn’t “freaking out” waiting for the response, it became apparent to me that I might always feel uneasy during that period of uncertainty.

I didn’t want that. I wanted to be completely unaffected, as if I had never had a bad experience and my heart was calm.

But hovering it was, because there are no guarantees. And as the gears of my life started turning once again, I remembered that there was no going back. All the negatives that have happened have happened and I can’t change that.

Eventually, years from now, my emotions may soften, but in the meantime, I’m just going to have to be okay with hovering for a few minutes.

Nothing to Fear but Fear…Sort of

About five years ago around this time of the year, I had an uneasy feeling.

So, let me back up. The previous August 2016 I had felt a small lump in my left breast. It wasn’t all that different from another lump that I had gone to see my Nurse Practitioner about in late June 2016, and she had put my fears to rest.

Still, she noted that I hadn’t had a mammogram since 2013, so she wrote me an order for one so that I could keep on track with my screenings.

But I dragged my feet on the mammogram. And when the August lump appeared, I decided to wait until it disappeared–you know, like they always did–before setting up the appointment. Because going into a screening knowing that I had a lump seemed terrifying.

You can’t hide from your fears, but that didn’t stop me from trying.

It didn’t disappear. I kept feeling it, pressing it to see how squishy it was, did it move about, was it getting bigger. And all the time, wondering how long it would last. It was hanging around longer than I expected.

But I still waited because I was afraid. I didn’t want to go to the mammogram and have the technician look concerned. Maybe she’d call the doctor in and the doctor would look concerned. Maybe they’d suggest more tests.

I *knew* it was nothing because it had to be nothing, but I didn’t want to risk having the medical professionals think it was something because that would be terrifying to me when I really knew that it was nothing. I didn’t want to experience that fear needlessly. I was afraid of being afraid.

So I waited until around this time of the year in 2017, when, after talking with my mom, we both agreed that getting the lump checked out would relieve my building anxiety. I imagined a pleasant conversation with the Nurse Practitioner as she would say, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing.”

Except that’s not what my NP said. Her expression went from friendly-smiley to concern, and she told me that I needed to get that mammogram done as soon as possible. All that fear that I’d tried to avoid by not getting the screening suddenly hit me at once. As the NP left the examination room, she admonished me to not put the mammogram off.

The order that I got read, “Mammography and Diagnostic Screening”. The left breast on the picture on the sheet was circled. I think. To be honest, I don’t remember much more than that. To an outsider, I was just going to have a suspicious lump checked out. But inside me, there was a tornado of anxiety whipping around unchecked.

I know I know I know…but at that time, the fear of what might be overpowered common sense. So I waited.

I had waited six months simply to avoid fear. I was so afraid of the fear that I was willing to risk my life–even though I hadn’t see it that way. The overwhelming need to not experience fear trumped everything else because it was so horrible that I couldn’t seen past it. Nothing else mattered.

Believe it or not, I didn’t realize that I had been suffering from severe anxiety for a number of years. It was always bubbling right by the surface, occasionally boiling over, but never sufficiently dealt with. It had built up throughout my life through an unfortunate series of events and I had become worse and worse at shaking it, but the two years prior to my diagnosis brought some of the longest bouts of chronic anxiety and feelings of worthlessness.

And all that fear that I had, that reason for not getting the lump checked out, that fear that almost cost me my life? Cancer was what forced me to face it. The most feared disease that I could have imagined ironically put me on the path to finally dealing with one of the most crippling issues of my adult life.

No, I’m not going to say that I’m thankful for cancer. Because that would be ridiculous. But I can now step back and see the worth of fearful experiences and understand that sometimes it’s the horrible things that push you into the most meaningful personal growth.