What's a Fancy Word for Armpit?

Two weeks ago, I was doing a breast self exam, and I felt something different.  It definitely felt lumpish in my left armpit, lumpier than my right armpit at least.  I noticed this difference because I've been doing breast self exams daily, not because I'm a super responsible person, but because I could never remember to do monthly self breast exams, so I made it part of my daily routine.

I didn't think much of the lump....  I'm a liar.  I worried, but not in the way people usually worry about such things,  You see I worry about everything, and I know this.  Therefore, I have established different levels of worry.  And this was definitely an "I'm worried about this, but most people probably wouldn't be pulling out their burial wishes, and you know that, so check yourself before you wreck yourself, girl." kind of worry.  I knew I was probably blowing things completely out of proportion.

My physical was scheduled for a week and a half from lump finding day, so I figured I'd have the doctor check it out, and that I'd put it out of my mind....  But I couldn't.  Once a bad thought enters my terrifyingly neurotic mind, it's like an instant replay.  You know the scene in the Exorcist where the possessed girl starts vomiting, yeah, see how I did that, just put that horrible image on instant replay in your mind. It was like that.

I figured I'd ease my worries by asking my sister to ask her husband, (Mr. M.D.,PhD), if it was anything I should go in early to get looked at.  Mr. M.D. PhD was working that evening so he was unavailable for consultation.  Naturally, I consulted the next best thing, Web M.D, the Susan G. Komen website and any other frightening website.  And I got freaked out.

I said nothing to my husband that night.  I decided I would sleep peacefully, and go to urgent care to have it looked at in the morning.  This seemed like the plan a sane person would make, but it didn't work for me.  I tossed and turned, cried, thought about how my MIL could move in to help Josh after my passing, fretted over all the things I'd need to write down,  (he doesn't even know how to pay the bills, he can't braid), I thought about the journals I would start writing to my loved ones, and I sweated, like a lot.

The next morning, sleep deprived and insanely anxious, I sent the kids on the bus, and Josh and I went to urgent care.  At urgent care the P.A. said she could feel something, but that it didn't seem like a big deal to her, and that I should just have the doctor look at it when I went in for my physical.  She did mention that sometimes shaving can irritate lymph nodes in the armpit, and suggested that I not shave before I see the doctor.  I left feeling better.

The next week I went in for the physical.  I arrived early for my appointment, and as I sat waiting to be called in I realized that I didn't know the proper terminology for armpit.  I consider myself well spoken and well read.  I've done my best to use anatomical terms when speaking with my children about their body parts, but here I was about to have a body part examined that I had nothing but slang to describe.  (My mother, versed in medical terminology, and disturbed by my ineptness in this area has since told me the term is, axilla. In case you need that information someday.) This vocabulary deficiency, along with the choice I made long ago to stop wearing antiperspirant/deodorants, and my hairy armpits started to worry me more than the lump.  Of course, as happens often in doctor's offices, I was left to wait for a grossly exaggerated amount of time, and all during this time, I was fretting and sweating.  I realized that things were not looking good for this doctor.  She was going to have to examine my sweaty, stinky, hairy armpit lump, and the later she arrived, the worse the situation.

This is not a pic of me, but you get the idea.

An hour into my dysfunctional self chatter, she arrived, we discussed the "armpit or underarm, or I don't know the right word for it" lump, and she left the room so I could change.  Three seconds after she left the room, she flung the door wide open without knocking, while I was dressed in only one sock, I held up my large paper napkin in modesty, she apologized and left the room.  This time she did not return for 15 minutes.  I sat, waited, fretted and sweated on the exam table.  She returned, knocked, and I yelled that it was safe.  I made a joke about the first time she opened the door, she seemed at ease, which is the goal when you're naked sweating and hairy, to put the other person at ease.  Before she proceeded to the breast/armpit exam, I made my apologies for my sweaty hairiness and my ignorance on the medical term for my underam, she laughed and was again, put at ease.  She was very thorough, and her lack of gloves may or may not have added to her thoroughness.

After all that, sweating and fretting and worrying, she had me sit up, she looked at me with genuine care, and said, "I think it's just fatty tissue"