Tag: Ultrasound

^{(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.

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.