For National Breast Cancer Awareness month, I thought I’d share an experience that affected Wayne and I deeply.
The Find
In 2001, I kept experiencing a series of sharp pains in my right breast. I first noticed it as I was raking leaves and then chasing Murph through them. Whenever I bounced, I’d feel a piercing stab through my nipple.
In general that breast had seemed more tender than usual at the time, but any kind of jolting movement suddenly brought on that lancing hot sensation. I went inside and felt around the area and couldn’t believe what I was feeling.
I’d always wondered what a lump might feel like. I always feared I’d have a lump that was too small for touch alone to detect. My lump was impossible not to notice. It was enormous, easily a quarter of the size of my breast.
I Have To Be Imagining This
I asked Wayne to confirm my findings when he came home. I didn’t go into many details. I didn’t want to taint his perception. Maybe I was making a big deal out of nothing. Maybe my breast always felt like that.
I knew immediately from the way his face fell that, no, my breast did not always feel that way.
And when he started crying I knew this was something I had to worry about –and, worse, that I’d have to go see a doctor about. Which struck even more dread in my heart, because I was sure needles would be involved.
Panic
I would have thought I’d be the one to freak out. But that night in bed as Wayne held me tight, he sobbed into my back. Over and over again he kept repeating how this couldn’t be happening and that he could not imagine life without me. That this had to be a bad dream.
I felt the same way. I had my own teary breakdown, came face to face with the issue of my mortality, and felt entirely too young to be thrown such a curve ball so early in the game. (I had just turned 31.)
But we both knew what I was up against. Breast cancer had affected my family before.
Family History
Like my fellow Families.com bloggers Michele Cheplic and Kristyn Crow, my mother also had breast cancer. She was diagnosed in 1982, at the age of 50.
She lucked out. It was found early. They treated her aggressively. She took charge of her recovery and refused to accept anything less than a full one.
Which is exactly what she did. I am so proud of my mom, the survivor. This past October she celebrated her 76th birthday and her 25th cancer-free year.
Uncertainty
I didn’t know what my lump meant, if I was doomed to follow in my mom’s footsteps and get breast cancer too. But I knew if I was doomed, then I also wanted to be doomed with her resolve and spunk so I, too, could emerge the victor.
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