My Lumps

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I found a lump in my left breast a few weeks ago.  I don't do self exams regularly, but there was a sore spot, and I got to poking around, and sure enough, there it was.

I didn't get myself into the doctor until Friday morning, and I probably wouldn't have gone then, except I woke up with a wicked case of vertigo--which I've also never had before--and all of us had to get on a plane to go to a wedding in a few hours and I wanted to make sure I wasn't having a stroke.

[Sidebar:  I'm a bit of a hypochondriac, obvi, and the feeling that I might be having a stroke happens to me semi-frequently:  if I don't get enough sleep, or feel sad or freaked out, or just don't eat every two hours, my eye starts to twitch and I get a kind of migraine-y headache and can't form words and basically my little rat-brain goes and hits the "having a stroke" panic button].

Observation one:  It's funny how I just finished a book for academics on harmonizing work life and home life, and yet that morning woke with vertigo, with dizziness and physical imbalance so bad that I fell twice in the bathroom just trying to get ready to go to the doctor's.

Observation two:  My body is an unrelenting and highly accurate response system to what is going on in my brain and to the choices I make with it.  For example, the vertigo is mostly gone, but then yesterday I developed a stye in my eye, swelling it, and making it a little hard to work.  For fuck's sake already.

I'm not saying I caused myself to have a wacky medical condition that literally mimics what is going on in my life, which perhaps has been too work-centered lately.  But maybe.

Just in case, I'm taking today off.

Anyway, I got to the doctor's on Friday and explained about the dizziness and the falling and the nausea and the splitting headaches and she made sure my left arm felt okay and my speech was okay and said I wasn't having a stroke.  This seemed amazing to me because I felt like I was making no sense at all, like I was moving and talking like one of those animatrons at Chuck-E-Cheese.  And I thought for sure I was stroking out and it was obvious to everyone.  But I also had a little bit of hypochondriac's remorse that it wasn't a stroke, which would earn me at least several weeks in bed and maybe give me some fodder for a Ted Talk.

That was a terrible joke.  I'm sorry I made it.  Forgive me.  I take strokes super seriously.  As you know.

Anyway, vertigo seemed like a merciful diagnosis after that.  Even though Rat Brain went and immediately assumed I'd have it for weeks on end and wouldn't be able to ride my bike or work on my computer or do yoga or drive and then what.

Rat Brain is the worst.  I recommend not going to it for advice.  Ever.

So then I also mentioned the thing about the lump and she said, it's probably nothing, most of these things are nothing, but then she found it pretty much immediately, plus another one, FML, and then started calling it a "mass" and ordered mammograms and things.  She also looked off into the distance and gave an angry little lecture that women are being told not to do self breast exams, and then they don't know how to identify normal lumps vs. abnormal lumps, and I felt like she was telling a story about me right in front of me but acting like I wasn't there.

Once she stopped scolding who knows who she looked at me again and reassured me there were lots of reasons for lumps to appear, meaning other than cancer, I think, though she didn't say that word.  I'm not so sure it's nothing, though rationally I know there's all sorts of things it could be.  I also know there's no need to borrow trouble, as my friend S. says, and there have been lots of examples in my life where I've borrowed trouble needlessly and then everything has been fine.

But it does make you think things.  It does make me think about how I support my family, and what if I get sick and am out for a while.  It makes me think how much I hate being sick, and about how high the dust bunny piles would get in my house if I got sick.  It makes me think about my kids having to see me be sick.  It makes me think about E., who already lost one wife to cancer and who doesn't need to be going through anything resembling that again.  It makes me think about my cousin, who is in the hospital right this very second having very intensive chemotherapy treatments for leukemia that doesn't look at first glance to be super curable, though nobody is counting that lady out yet because she is a badass and miracles happen.  It makes me think about every book I've ever read by women who have been diagnosed with cancer, and then it makes me think about what it will be like to write a post next week some time that says, jk, it wasn't cancer, just some lumpy booby stuff, no problem, no worries, sorry to have sounded the alarm.

I don't give myself too much time to think these thoughts, but they are floating around, back behind my eyeballs, creating static, maybe making the room spin, maybe causing my eye to swell up with fearful tears I can't seem to shed.  Or maybe it's just the beginning of the semester and there's a bunch of germs all over the place and I didn't wash my hands well enough that one time.

Who the hell knows.