As I sat today in a discussion that was brought up about how we would be having a guest lecture for my sorority about Breast Cancer awareness, I am brought back to the spring of my freshman year of college. I was deciding on whether or not to go to this lecture, pressured by friends, needing involvement points in order to go to our upcoming formal, but the words escaping their convincing mouth were not really sinking in. Instead they were tugging on the memories behind my own nightmarish experience. One thing said did resonate with me, how we never think it can happen to us though. That is right, it’s not real until it’s real for you.
I have never been one to talk about things that frighten me, I have always prided myself in being viewed as strong and independent, even though sometimes I am quite the opposite. Last spring was a rough one for me. School got harder, I went through a rough breakup, and being far away from my mother began to add up. It proceeded to get worse when I found the lump.
A few years ago, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. After the initial shock of the disease consuming my mother’s body and there being nothing I could do about it, I began to turn my thoughts to myself. Would it be genetic? Would I get it as well one day? What could I do to prevent it? It weighed on my mind daily until after my mother went into remission. When she began to improve the less and less I thought about the disease, and before I knew it she was well and back to her old self. It will never cease to amaze me how fast a thought can dissipate when it is no longer the front runner of problems in your immediate life.
It was January, I had gotten into the cold dorm shower after classes. I hardly noticed it, then all the sudden it became the only thing I notice. A hard knot in the middle of my chest. It made me jump out of my skin, I rinsed the shampoo from my hair as rapidly as possible, switched off the shower, wrapped myself in a towel and scuffled out to my roommate. After inspecting it herself, my roommate claimed it was probably nothing and to just ignore it. Self-diagnoses were a regular for us, ranging from the common cold all the way to sprained ankles. We spent an hour on WebMD –I know you hate it when I go on there sorry, mom– just to be sure, but of course that always leads to more trouble. Regardless of my research I went to bed pretending that I was settled and it was all a bad dream.
Fast forward a month, it was bigger now. I could move it with two fingers all along my chest. It was hard like one of those chocolate Whoopers with the malt middle, painless to touch but regularly causing an ache throughout my entire left side. I started to get an uncomfortable feeling again. I gathered two of my sorority sisters for comic relief and headed to campus health for the excruciating wait to be seen by a professional. Waiting was the hardest part, I waited and waited just to be referred to another doctor, and then another, until I was finally sent to a radiology clinic. That is when I began to really worry.
The medical bills were rolling in and I was going to be swimming in them if I did not tell my parents what was going on. If anything, I was more afraid to tell my mother than of the possibilities themselves. Afraid to make her upset, to stress her out, it made me nervous that she would get sick again. Her reaction when I finally told her was not my favorite. She screamed at me for keeping it a secret for so long, for visiting doctors without her, and then she proceeded to try and cancel our spring break Italy trip (slightly dramatic mom) but after a minute or two she calmed down. She booked a flight down to Tucson to come to my next appointment and once we were there it was confirmed that it was indeed, a seven inch by five inch tumor that had set up camp inside my chest.
We would not know if it was cancerous until it was removed and properly tested. My mother then went into mama bear mode claiming no one would operate on me except her surgeon and demanding answer after answer. It probably was a good thing she was there, because I was silent. I did not ask any questions, I did not say anything, I did not read a pamphlet, or even glance at the informational posters on the wall. I zoned out. At nineteen how do you develop a tumor? I did not understand, I sat baffled for hours.
I would go home that summer and undergo surgery. I remember my surgeon, being a University of Arizona alumni, even sang the Beardown song as I drifted off into a medical induced sleep and everything there after went black.
She later sent me picture of my little uninvited guest and it was huge, but it was also gone for good now. All that is left is the scar that will probably never go away as a reminder of the importance to notice what is happening within our own bodies. There will always be that anticipation for me of waiting for the if or when, I might discover something again. Notice changes, be aware, and always check even if it feels like nothing, it might just make a huge difference.
