My Saturday started just like all the others.
My friend Nancy called at 5 something in the morning during her hour and half long commute to work. We talked for a while. I told her I had to go, I was going back to sleep for half an hour and then getting up to go to my Saturday morning Weight watcher’s meeting.
I eventually got up, got showered and left to go. I went to weight watchers, I lost 2.6 pounds, stopped at McDonalds for my normal coffee and sausage biscuit. Met a friend at the driving range, went to the dollar store, picked up new pictures. A Saturday just like all the others
I got home, and my mom called. I didn’t think much of it, we were planning a birthday party for my sister the next day. Nothing big, just the 5 of us, but there were still details to discuss.
I called my mom back, we made small talk, had I lost any weight this week, plans for the day, yada, yada. Then my mom took an exceptionally deep breath and said, “I have something to tell you.” I thought oh crap, now what. Turns out my mom went for a mammogram on Friday. She just went because she thought she should have one. Turns out they found a 1 cm speculated mass in her breast. The worst part was that it wasn’t some random tech who found it, it was friend she worked with. The rad doctor too was a doctor she knew. And they were crying. Let’s be honest, you see enough stuff, you know what you are looking at. Don’t ever believe a tech when they tell you they need the doctor to look at it, they are the ones who tell the doctor where to look. So without the ultrasound, without the biopsy, they are fairly it will be cancer.
Talk about punching you in the gut. I didn’t cry on the phone with my mom, I waited until I got off the phone. And then I sobbed. I am for all practical purposes 35 now. If my mom has breast cancer, this changes my entire world. At 35 is when you need to start worrying about this yourself if you have a first degree relative. What if my mom… I mean there is so much she is still supposed to be there for me for.
I called my friends. They all tell you not to freak out, not to assume the worst, that it will be ok. I calm down. I call my mom back. Ask her if she would like some ass fat to reconstruct her breast if they do a mastectomy. She says they use the tissue from the person. I can’t catch a break. I also tell her if she dies before I have a baby, I won’t let her go to heaven. My mom believes you have to let people when they die. I also tell her that she is total control of this situation, more so than other in her life and she needs to remember that.
My day goes on, I surf the internet, I load the dishwasher, clean the fish tank, watch a friend’s baby. And then I come home and look at my breasts. I once had a lover that told me that boobies were meant to be cherished. He had no idea what he was saying or how his words would echo through my head tonight. I am sure that my mom and I look at our breasts differently. She is 55, been married for 37 years. Her breasts had nourished three children and comforted so many bad days and boo boos. They had lived a life. I look at mine as something I offer men along with my blonde hair. They define me. I miss the lover who had so tenderly caressed my boobies tonight. I will never look at them the same. Now they have taken on a new identity. They now just remind me of how scared I am now for my mother.
Inside my head, I’m battening down the hatches for the conflict in my family that I sure will come to a head, each sister some how trying to diminish my role, my need to help, my need to do something, somehow trying to prove that this is affecting them more severely.
I am praying and hoping that the doctor is wrong this one time. That they do the biopsy only to find it’s not cancer, but a lipoma. Regardless, today my life changed forever.
