Delicious treats dreamed up by my love, fabulous gifts, and the comfort of family makes Mother's Day special or at least appropriately celebrated in the eyes of our everyday-is-a-party culture. I don't need pomp and circumstance and surely don't stand on ceremony, not for this made up day. Mother's Day is always a strange one for me. My husband, who is a private chef, almost always works so that the lady of the house can celebrate with her family in grand fashion. THAT is her Mother's Day.
Mine, at least for the past few years, looks more like this: my husband leaves for a beautiful destination of the rich and famous by private jet or souped up, tinted-window SUV to prepare luxury meals and treats for his clients, and I finish out the week of school, activities, play dates, grocery shopping, story reading (now listening since the 6 year old is thrilled to show off her reading), and socializing on my own. It's our rhythm and save the early school drop off on Friday when both girls need to be ready early enough to drop by 8 am, I can and do handle it.
I am too keenly aware of how quickly my children are growing up. Little chubby hands and fat, yummy fingers have become strong and elegant, rolly-poly bodies have elongated into graceful torsos, arms and legs for days, and beautiful faces resting on long necks. I measure time by these changes, recall real life events by growing and falling teeth, short or long hair, training wheels or riding free. In a mother's calendar there are also injuries and ailments as mile markers, moments that stop one's heart, and shore up strengths one did not know were there.
I remember when Lily broke her finger one summer when her cousin was visiting and recall her saying with pride after she'd been X-rayed and splinted, "I can't believe I broke a bone!" She was beaming and proud of her ability to hurt, to suffer, and to endure. She was so human in that moment and she brought my fantasy of being able to protect them, live the hurts for them, take the force of the blow, crashing to the ground. And months later when Virginie, walking with some friends along the creek that either trickles or rages through our town depending on the season, tripped and cut her chin requiring three stitches, I regretted the choice I made to allow her the opportunity to explore and court danger.
It's the delusion I have of shielding my children from life's pains and ills and woes, and physical safety seems a good place to practice. How many times a day do I say, "Be careful! Watch out! Don't touch that! Don't slip! Don't fall! Look out! Why would you do that? You are going to hurt yourself!" And hurt sucks. The iconic images of motherhood show women cuddling and comforting their children, holding them close, wiping tears and touching boo-boo's. The urban mythology of mothers lifting cars, running into burning buildings, staring down wild animals or humans to keep their babes safe only emphasizes this expectation.
When I arrived to a screaming Virginie, hurt on an after-school play date, her middle toe on her left foot smashed by a falling board, I immediately knew it was bad. She was screaming bloody murder. There was blood everywhere. Her tears were fat, her fear palpable, and I needed to make it right. Though I hate driving, especially on any road with more than 2 cars, I packed up my peanut in the car with her favorite things and some warm clothes and raced her to the ER. I carried her in and though I did not scream like Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment", I would have if the staff wasn't so efficient. I hadn't taken the time to truly look at her little toe because I'd gone into autopilot, but now we had time to be together...and I peeked.
She looked at me with those longing, big, brown eyes, eyelashes glued together with tears, and asked, "Is it bad? Is it bad, Mama?"
"It's alright, Peanut. We are going to get you better. These people here are going to help us. Just hold onto Mommy if you feel scared." And she squeezed. And I squeezed back. Also the tears. Her toe looked so, so terrible and it was. I wondered how this tiny thing had suffered, what she must have felt and thought, when pain, pain like that is still relatively new. I thought about all the hurts I'd ever had, all the hurts from which I will need to shield her, all the shoring up, all the armor, and I wished that I could take the hit. I silently prayed, "Why didn't you let it happen to me? Why did it have to be her?" And I became steely because we had hours to go and I was angry and hurt for her and I could only be by her side and bombard her with love and comfort. (Broken)
She was wheeled into a room for an X-ray to make sure that her toe wasn't broken. It was cold in the room and made heavy by the lead aprons we wore to shield our organs from the radiation. Hers was a ladybug. Mine was blue. She lay there on that table, following directions and holding still, tiny tears falling to her ears, balling her hands into fists. She was pulling it together. She looked at me and I smiled and she at me. She got to wheel herself back in a wheelchair (a wheelchair!) to our triage curtain and she beamed. Though she could "feel her heartbeat in her toe" we were coming to the other side of this ordeal. When she was back on her bed, I got on with her and we cuddled. She asked me if it was okay for me to be on the bed with her to which I replied, "Mommy makes her own rules when it comes to her babies. If you need me here, then YES, it's more than okay."
After a long afternoon into evening, Virginie ended up losing her toenail and getting five stitches to close her toe. A piece of antibiotic gauze was put in place to hopefully facilitate regrowth of her nail. She will have to get a boot to walk and is taking antibiotics to protect against infection. Sutures, rather than stitches, were used to close her toe because, as the doctor said, "This is not like the stitches in her chin that we put in to allow minimal scarring. This is her toe and it needs more time to heal. If it scars, it's in a place where no one can see it...unless she is wearing sandals." She'll have her tiny scars tucked on her foot, shared only with those she allows close.
And so will I. Teeny, tiny little scars made each time I see them hurt, whether on accident or on purpose, lacerate my heart. I will see the stitching, the jagged lines where the skin came back together. Those are for the physical ouches. And of the psychological tears? The emotional punctures? Hidden wounds? As she lay on the suturing table, wrapped in the cocoon to prevent her from moving, fear, frustration, pain on her face, I put my nose to hers, felt her eyelashes on my cheek, and whispered to her about the unicorns and sweets we think about before we dream. We talked about how we were together and how I would never leave her, would always be nose to nose, eyelashes to cheek, butterfly kisses, even when I wasn't really there. She quieted herself, went inside, and she believed me. She trusted me. Even in her hurt she believed that I would give her everything I had, that I was somehow feeling her pain or that I would at least walk with her through it. Comfort.
My husband is not here and we are not having a crazy display of elegant foods. I won't drink a mimosa in bed, nor will I sit with my feet up or even sleep past 6:45 am. I won't play queen for a day or do "something special for myself," at least not the kind of special that many believe moms are looking for. I am relieved that my girl is alright. I am proud of myself for getting in the car and driving her to the hospital and keeping a cool head. I am grateful for the people in my life who know what an accomplishment that is for me.
While sitting in the emergency room before Virginie was seen by a doctor I thought, "My baby will be scarred. She's only six years old and something is already broken. Her perfect little feet, her tiny toenails are gone." Yes, I know it's ridiculous. When they are those cute, little cherubs, smooth-skinned and innocent, we try so desperately to keep them clean of wounds, bruises, hurts. They are the best of us, the good in us, the pure. Each fall, scrape, tumble left me holding my breath, hoping it wouldn't be too bad, that it would heal quickly and leave no trace on their bodies or in their hearts.
Two days after she was hurt, Virginie is hopping on one foot through the house, laughing and smiling and chatting as she always has. Her foot is wrapped and the gauze is looking worse for the wear even after just two days. She's been fixed, is on the mend, will come out unscathed if not unscarred. But it's me, Mommy, who is taking a little longer to heal. Being a mom (for me) means going all the way in. Into the pain, into the hurt, into the past, into the joy, into a depth of love that frankly, nothing in my life before ever prepared me for. It's breaking and putting myself back together all the time. Its carrying the hurt with them and for them. It is doing my best to keep them from being broken.
We're together this morning and we are whole.
Happy Mother's Day.
(c) 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Lady Bits: Bounce your boobies, Part 2.
Please. Take your time. I am just waiting on this news feeling like hearing it out loud could pull down the poll of the circus tent of my life and cause everything to collapse, hurting, maiming, maybe even killing some of the performers. Was it two to three business days you told me? Was Monday a holiday? I checked the cell every few minutes thinking maybe the phone was still on vibrate. Answered lots of solicitations on the home phone just in case, somehow, the call from Arizona was the lab, knowing full well that the lab was up the street and that it would, in fact, be from my doctor's office that the call came. But it didn't come. Not for two, three, four, five, or six days. I waited and let myself be convinced and reassured by friends that no news was good news. "They would want you to know right away if it was indeed C," still no one wanted to say it and I surely did not want to hear the letters that follow 'c' in that word.
My dear husband, seven plus years older than I am, always (so sweetly) reminds me that I am young. "You are still young and beautiful." And this not only when he is feeling frisky. Nowadays when we say things like this, it is often in relation to how much more of life there is to live, that yes I CAN still wear a short skirt if I like, do something crazy to my hair, start a new career, try new things. But when it comes to health issues--aches, pains, pinches, twists, tears, and pulls, age has slowly crept up with us. When I see pictures of some of my childhood mates, I see their parents' faces staring back at me. I read posts about injuries from doing things that were once facile, part of every day movement until just the wrong thing slipped or "went." We laugh about those pains. "Getting old," we say. But aging also brings more serious health concerns and a need to make at least annual trips to a physician. The laissez-faire attitude of our youth has given way to consideration of each new freckle, rising cholesterol, too much sugar in the blood, lack of time for exercise or sleep, lack of time for anything really as a sign that we are creeping over that hill. We feel young inside but our bodies demand us to acknowledge that time has passed and that we need to be tender with them.
My dance classes and my meditation practice, my family and my love for them gave me the physical and psychic strength to prepare for the worst news but really expect the best. I, full to the brim with anxiety and too much nervous energy, found ways to distract myself from the waiting for results. My house is now spotless and that includes all closets, drawers, cabinets, and the attic. I danced my brains out and allowed people to love me, care for me, bring me food, invite me to parties, looked them back in their eyes to thank them, and just breathed in and out every single day. I breathed to the top of my head and down to my toes.
On the fifth day I started calling and leaving messages. I felt embarrassed to be calling as though it was expected that I'd wait patiently for the news. I wondered, in all the prep I was given for the biopsy, had anyone in the medical profession thought about my feelings, fears, hopes, anxiety. While I'd been warned not to take aspirin 48 hours prior, and been told how the procedure would happen (ultrasound, cleaning of the breast, numbing local anesthetic followed by a tugging or pulling sensation that would collect the cells to be examined, then days of soreness, bruising, swelling, a little pain, and a tiny scar underneath), very little was said about the shallow breaths I was taking, the tears that came to my eyes when I thought of having to tell the girls that something was wrong with Mommy. When they kicked or pulled or tugged at me and accidentally hit my ailing breast, I'd wince and then smile. I didn't want to give them anything to worry about. I was reminded only once to go back to my life as usual. I felt, and I could be wrong about it but it felt this way, that no one wanted to say what it was they knew I was afraid of. One does not go in for a biopsy the way one might for a new retinol cream for wrinkles. The biopsy signifies there is something in there that is unknown and the big unknown, the one that sets most of us on edge, is fucking cancer. I was scared shitless that I might have breast cancer.
For every day that I waited and meditated and danced and wore a brave face, I was scared, humbled, awed by the life I'd managed to make for myself. For people who loved me, for a community I belonged to, for friends, family, strangers, humankind that had the urge to live, to be part of this carnival called life. It had never been called into question for me in such high resolution. Yes, I was full of anxiety in Barbados and did fear losing it there and once there was some crazy turbulence on a plane where we dropped a few feet and I grabbed the girls and cried my face off, telling them how much I loved them over and over again until we steadied, but I never put myself, allowed myself to see myself as old enough, ready spiritually, to imagine the end of my life. Breathe in. Breathe out. This I would tell myself every moment that I drifted to those thoughts. Because that was what scared me the most. I went all the way there every time.
A rogue nurse in the office sent me a secret text to tell me that the results of my biopsy were negative two days before my doctor's office gave me the official word. I want to say that I danced on the ceiling, but I instead sat quietly on the floor, complete silence all around me, save the ticking of the clock in another room and the hum from the fridge. I felt relief for myself and compassion for those, many of whom are my friends or family or acquaintances, whose tales don't or have not ended on this note. I can still not touch the bullet resting on the inside corner pocket of my left breast. The bruising and soreness has proven a longer healing period than expected, but I know my little lump is there. I want to remove it. It is no talisman and I am not brave enough to carry it. Even knowing that it is benign, it presses at everything dear to me and threatens to pull the tent down. I'd prefer a scar where it once made itself cozy, an 'X' to mark the spot where my fears were released and my dreams held tight in a deep inhale were released.
Do your self exams and get a mammogram, ultrasound, MRI, or thermal scan if you are over 40 or have a history of breast cancer.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
My dear husband, seven plus years older than I am, always (so sweetly) reminds me that I am young. "You are still young and beautiful." And this not only when he is feeling frisky. Nowadays when we say things like this, it is often in relation to how much more of life there is to live, that yes I CAN still wear a short skirt if I like, do something crazy to my hair, start a new career, try new things. But when it comes to health issues--aches, pains, pinches, twists, tears, and pulls, age has slowly crept up with us. When I see pictures of some of my childhood mates, I see their parents' faces staring back at me. I read posts about injuries from doing things that were once facile, part of every day movement until just the wrong thing slipped or "went." We laugh about those pains. "Getting old," we say. But aging also brings more serious health concerns and a need to make at least annual trips to a physician. The laissez-faire attitude of our youth has given way to consideration of each new freckle, rising cholesterol, too much sugar in the blood, lack of time for exercise or sleep, lack of time for anything really as a sign that we are creeping over that hill. We feel young inside but our bodies demand us to acknowledge that time has passed and that we need to be tender with them.
My dance classes and my meditation practice, my family and my love for them gave me the physical and psychic strength to prepare for the worst news but really expect the best. I, full to the brim with anxiety and too much nervous energy, found ways to distract myself from the waiting for results. My house is now spotless and that includes all closets, drawers, cabinets, and the attic. I danced my brains out and allowed people to love me, care for me, bring me food, invite me to parties, looked them back in their eyes to thank them, and just breathed in and out every single day. I breathed to the top of my head and down to my toes.
On the fifth day I started calling and leaving messages. I felt embarrassed to be calling as though it was expected that I'd wait patiently for the news. I wondered, in all the prep I was given for the biopsy, had anyone in the medical profession thought about my feelings, fears, hopes, anxiety. While I'd been warned not to take aspirin 48 hours prior, and been told how the procedure would happen (ultrasound, cleaning of the breast, numbing local anesthetic followed by a tugging or pulling sensation that would collect the cells to be examined, then days of soreness, bruising, swelling, a little pain, and a tiny scar underneath), very little was said about the shallow breaths I was taking, the tears that came to my eyes when I thought of having to tell the girls that something was wrong with Mommy. When they kicked or pulled or tugged at me and accidentally hit my ailing breast, I'd wince and then smile. I didn't want to give them anything to worry about. I was reminded only once to go back to my life as usual. I felt, and I could be wrong about it but it felt this way, that no one wanted to say what it was they knew I was afraid of. One does not go in for a biopsy the way one might for a new retinol cream for wrinkles. The biopsy signifies there is something in there that is unknown and the big unknown, the one that sets most of us on edge, is fucking cancer. I was scared shitless that I might have breast cancer.
For every day that I waited and meditated and danced and wore a brave face, I was scared, humbled, awed by the life I'd managed to make for myself. For people who loved me, for a community I belonged to, for friends, family, strangers, humankind that had the urge to live, to be part of this carnival called life. It had never been called into question for me in such high resolution. Yes, I was full of anxiety in Barbados and did fear losing it there and once there was some crazy turbulence on a plane where we dropped a few feet and I grabbed the girls and cried my face off, telling them how much I loved them over and over again until we steadied, but I never put myself, allowed myself to see myself as old enough, ready spiritually, to imagine the end of my life. Breathe in. Breathe out. This I would tell myself every moment that I drifted to those thoughts. Because that was what scared me the most. I went all the way there every time.
A rogue nurse in the office sent me a secret text to tell me that the results of my biopsy were negative two days before my doctor's office gave me the official word. I want to say that I danced on the ceiling, but I instead sat quietly on the floor, complete silence all around me, save the ticking of the clock in another room and the hum from the fridge. I felt relief for myself and compassion for those, many of whom are my friends or family or acquaintances, whose tales don't or have not ended on this note. I can still not touch the bullet resting on the inside corner pocket of my left breast. The bruising and soreness has proven a longer healing period than expected, but I know my little lump is there. I want to remove it. It is no talisman and I am not brave enough to carry it. Even knowing that it is benign, it presses at everything dear to me and threatens to pull the tent down. I'd prefer a scar where it once made itself cozy, an 'X' to mark the spot where my fears were released and my dreams held tight in a deep inhale were released.
Do your self exams and get a mammogram, ultrasound, MRI, or thermal scan if you are over 40 or have a history of breast cancer.
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Lady Bits: Bounce your boobies, Part 1.
There is a lump. Well, I like to call it a marble on the inside corner pocket of my left breast. It is close to the sternum, so close that it was missed in the mammogram. But I can feel it. Rub it, move it around. Sometimes I lose it, but then it reappears, especially when I am lying flat and my once perky breasts drift to the sides of my body like loose bags of Jell-o, no longer resting on top of my chest, but on the sides like bat wings. I called my doctor and asked for further testing. My breasts are dense, lots of tissue and mass and weird stuff that I somehow never chose to use as a selling point once upon a way-back-when when I just wanted boys and men to touch them and was not feeling around for an exam. Go figure.
The exam is important. The mammogram is important and what came next for me is also important. After the mammogram did not detect my marble, I followed up with an ultrasound. Fortunately for me, my health insurance covered the follow up because it was requested by my doctor (thank you), after it was requested by me. Lying flat on my back in the exam room, breasts to the side, my nurse chit chatted with me about the usual subjects--my kids, my work, my voice, how it wouldn't take long and then I could get back to my life--while moving the roller-ball all over my right breast, not even stopping at the speed bump of my cold nipple, rubbing ultrasound goo all over the place and typing frantically like a science fiction space crew member who was soon to be ambushed and killed in the first ten minutes. At least the gel had been warmed up, something almost never done when, years earlier a similar roller ball was checking in on the babies growing in my belly. When she got to my left breast her voice began to trail off. She asked me about nipple discharge and breast pain. Huh? Then she said she was all done and left me to wipe off the goo. I was told to wait in case the doctor wanted to see me and was not allowed to get dressed. (Not that fitting my clothes over my slimed body seemed appealing at that moment.) When she returned, she told me the doctor did not need to see me and that my results would come in a few days. The call would come from my doctor and not their office.
I knew I felt a lump, so I was certain they were going to tell me something about it. I was just hoping for something more reassuring, a "this is just a precaution/I wouldn't worry too much/Let me put you at ease," but nothing like that came. I went home and waited. Waited with high levels of anxiety and a nervousness about the threat to my peace, to the sanctity of my family, about the break in my good fortune on the health front.
Two days later I was called by my doctor and the imaging office. Both left messages. Both wanted to talk to me. Not quite reassuring. I called my doctor's office first. She told me there had indeed been some abnormality that needed to be further investigated with an ultrasound guided biopsy. They wanted to do an ultrasound to see the marble and then lance it with a needle and vacuum some of the tissue to examine it and determine its nature. They wanted to find out what it was, what it was made of, and was it malignant or benign, cancer or...something else. I spoke with ease, professionalism, and calm. I told all parties that I understood what was happening. I tried not to expire on the floor when the earliest date to perform the biopsy was more than 2 weeks from the moment of the phone call when inside I was screaming, "Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I will come in tomorrow. How about today? How about right now?" But the truth is, I was and am scared to death and cannot stand that I don't know. All sorts of apocalyptic, end-of-days images flashed before my eyes, and my anxiety which usually rides pretty high at an 8 out of 10 on normal days was nearing infinity.
There is no history of breast cancer in my family and while that makes me feel good, from what I learned all those afternoons in the imaging center, 80% of breast cancer patients have no history. So there is that. The doctors and nurses were kind as I would expect them to be. Somber faces and head shaking would not really have been apropos. I thanked everyone for everything in the hopes that my kindness could have something, anything to do with my results. And then I walked out of the office into the light of day and matriculated back into the suburban stream.
It was a secret. I blended right back in, going with the flow, talking about homework and after school activities and the struggle to get the girls down for bed time. I greeted friends on the street, chatted with my cashier at the grocery store, let the girls snuggle with me at night though their kicks to the now sore breast were excruciating. Suddenly the marble felt like a ticking bomb sitting right in the middle of my chest, at the center of my heart chakra. I told myself, this is a metaphor, this is a lump of coal in your house of love. You need to open your heart and find a way to love greater. I sat with this. Called my Buddhists and meditators, walked in nature, danced my brains out in class. Never one to share news, good or bad, for fear of being consoled or seen or loved or cared for in such a visible way (see Childhood traumas), I told very few. The first were told the day of the biopsy because one hour after my scheduled appointment time, I still had not been seen and my husband, who'd taken the day off to be with me, had to go pick up Virginie. I sent out cryptic notes to two of my closest friends asking if they'd be able to pick me up. When they fully understood the gravity of my bizarro texts, they immediately offered to help and pulled the heart strings and loved me. Ow. I mean, yay.
I write this now to share because I need to, because I want to be close, make connections, but also to say, "Touch your lady bits. Rub your boobs. Do your self exams." Sitting in the waiting area/recovery after the biopsy before heading in for a second mammogram, I found myself next to a woman from Jamaica. I cannot tell you her age because she looked as young and clear-skinned and vibrant as she could, but she mentioned her family, children who insisted she come in for an exam. She'd not seen a doctor in twelve years. Needing to gab, feeling quite nervous in her surgical gown with strange ties and loose strings, she turned to me and asked, "How do you tie this thing anyway?" I showed her the inside ties and the outside snap and she finally felt OK. In those few moments we were community, family, support, mirrors.
Talking about our breasts, our bodies, women's bodies is still so awkward and uncomfortable, even amongst ourselves. So many of us joke about the manhandling that goes on during a mammogram, feeling your breasts pressed together like between two large-volume books, some even avoid it all together. But it is certainly no more painful than having a nursing baby bite your nipples or some of the pulling and tugging they experience at other times (name yours). An exam takes just minutes. Many are unsure if they are doing the self-exam correctly, so they just don't do it at all. It feels silly. There's so much going on in there, who knows what you are feeling--a muscle, a knot, a mammary gland, a fibroid, but you should still do it. Touch them, feel them, get to know them. In our youth we asked our lovers to do it. Caress them, be kind to them, love them. We must do the same.
And now I wait. The bruising is clearing up. A small purplish, black and blue mark slowly fades on the inside corner pocket of my left breast. There is a tiny little pin prick mark underneath where the boobs were once ripe and delicious before the girls nursed them all away. Immediately following the procedure the poor thing was sore and tender and my core was wounded but I could go on about my business. After forty-eight hours I was allowed to dance again. Last night I took a hip hop class and laughed and smiled with friends and dancers. As I sit in anticipation of my results I implore you to get examined, ask your friends, lovers, wives, girlfriends, mothers, and daughters to check.
To be continued...
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
The exam is important. The mammogram is important and what came next for me is also important. After the mammogram did not detect my marble, I followed up with an ultrasound. Fortunately for me, my health insurance covered the follow up because it was requested by my doctor (thank you), after it was requested by me. Lying flat on my back in the exam room, breasts to the side, my nurse chit chatted with me about the usual subjects--my kids, my work, my voice, how it wouldn't take long and then I could get back to my life--while moving the roller-ball all over my right breast, not even stopping at the speed bump of my cold nipple, rubbing ultrasound goo all over the place and typing frantically like a science fiction space crew member who was soon to be ambushed and killed in the first ten minutes. At least the gel had been warmed up, something almost never done when, years earlier a similar roller ball was checking in on the babies growing in my belly. When she got to my left breast her voice began to trail off. She asked me about nipple discharge and breast pain. Huh? Then she said she was all done and left me to wipe off the goo. I was told to wait in case the doctor wanted to see me and was not allowed to get dressed. (Not that fitting my clothes over my slimed body seemed appealing at that moment.) When she returned, she told me the doctor did not need to see me and that my results would come in a few days. The call would come from my doctor and not their office.
I knew I felt a lump, so I was certain they were going to tell me something about it. I was just hoping for something more reassuring, a "this is just a precaution/I wouldn't worry too much/Let me put you at ease," but nothing like that came. I went home and waited. Waited with high levels of anxiety and a nervousness about the threat to my peace, to the sanctity of my family, about the break in my good fortune on the health front.
Two days later I was called by my doctor and the imaging office. Both left messages. Both wanted to talk to me. Not quite reassuring. I called my doctor's office first. She told me there had indeed been some abnormality that needed to be further investigated with an ultrasound guided biopsy. They wanted to do an ultrasound to see the marble and then lance it with a needle and vacuum some of the tissue to examine it and determine its nature. They wanted to find out what it was, what it was made of, and was it malignant or benign, cancer or...something else. I spoke with ease, professionalism, and calm. I told all parties that I understood what was happening. I tried not to expire on the floor when the earliest date to perform the biopsy was more than 2 weeks from the moment of the phone call when inside I was screaming, "Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I will come in tomorrow. How about today? How about right now?" But the truth is, I was and am scared to death and cannot stand that I don't know. All sorts of apocalyptic, end-of-days images flashed before my eyes, and my anxiety which usually rides pretty high at an 8 out of 10 on normal days was nearing infinity.
There is no history of breast cancer in my family and while that makes me feel good, from what I learned all those afternoons in the imaging center, 80% of breast cancer patients have no history. So there is that. The doctors and nurses were kind as I would expect them to be. Somber faces and head shaking would not really have been apropos. I thanked everyone for everything in the hopes that my kindness could have something, anything to do with my results. And then I walked out of the office into the light of day and matriculated back into the suburban stream.
It was a secret. I blended right back in, going with the flow, talking about homework and after school activities and the struggle to get the girls down for bed time. I greeted friends on the street, chatted with my cashier at the grocery store, let the girls snuggle with me at night though their kicks to the now sore breast were excruciating. Suddenly the marble felt like a ticking bomb sitting right in the middle of my chest, at the center of my heart chakra. I told myself, this is a metaphor, this is a lump of coal in your house of love. You need to open your heart and find a way to love greater. I sat with this. Called my Buddhists and meditators, walked in nature, danced my brains out in class. Never one to share news, good or bad, for fear of being consoled or seen or loved or cared for in such a visible way (see Childhood traumas), I told very few. The first were told the day of the biopsy because one hour after my scheduled appointment time, I still had not been seen and my husband, who'd taken the day off to be with me, had to go pick up Virginie. I sent out cryptic notes to two of my closest friends asking if they'd be able to pick me up. When they fully understood the gravity of my bizarro texts, they immediately offered to help and pulled the heart strings and loved me. Ow. I mean, yay.
I write this now to share because I need to, because I want to be close, make connections, but also to say, "Touch your lady bits. Rub your boobs. Do your self exams." Sitting in the waiting area/recovery after the biopsy before heading in for a second mammogram, I found myself next to a woman from Jamaica. I cannot tell you her age because she looked as young and clear-skinned and vibrant as she could, but she mentioned her family, children who insisted she come in for an exam. She'd not seen a doctor in twelve years. Needing to gab, feeling quite nervous in her surgical gown with strange ties and loose strings, she turned to me and asked, "How do you tie this thing anyway?" I showed her the inside ties and the outside snap and she finally felt OK. In those few moments we were community, family, support, mirrors.
Talking about our breasts, our bodies, women's bodies is still so awkward and uncomfortable, even amongst ourselves. So many of us joke about the manhandling that goes on during a mammogram, feeling your breasts pressed together like between two large-volume books, some even avoid it all together. But it is certainly no more painful than having a nursing baby bite your nipples or some of the pulling and tugging they experience at other times (name yours). An exam takes just minutes. Many are unsure if they are doing the self-exam correctly, so they just don't do it at all. It feels silly. There's so much going on in there, who knows what you are feeling--a muscle, a knot, a mammary gland, a fibroid, but you should still do it. Touch them, feel them, get to know them. In our youth we asked our lovers to do it. Caress them, be kind to them, love them. We must do the same.
And now I wait. The bruising is clearing up. A small purplish, black and blue mark slowly fades on the inside corner pocket of my left breast. There is a tiny little pin prick mark underneath where the boobs were once ripe and delicious before the girls nursed them all away. Immediately following the procedure the poor thing was sore and tender and my core was wounded but I could go on about my business. After forty-eight hours I was allowed to dance again. Last night I took a hip hop class and laughed and smiled with friends and dancers. As I sit in anticipation of my results I implore you to get examined, ask your friends, lovers, wives, girlfriends, mothers, and daughters to check.
To be continued...
(c) Copyright 2013. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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