I hadn’t been to the doctor in two years. Bugg was 2, and in the melee of selling a house without buying a new one, living with my parents for a few months, buying a new home (that needed a complete renovation) and, oh yeah, changing jobs too, my annual visits just sort of fell to the bottom of the to do list, along with signing Belle up for preschool, sleep, so many loads of laundry, and my mental health.
But my new employer promised a nice deposit (like hundreds of dollars) into my HSA (Health Savings Account) funds if I went to my annual visit, so after arranging childcare for that day, off to my midwife I went.
Sidebar: Midwives ROCK, and not just for the reason that I’m going to reveal to you in a moment. If you have one in practice near you and you are supported by health insurance to visit her, do it. If you are pregnant or plan on becoming pregnant, look for a midwife to do your prenatal care and delivery now. You’ll thank yourself for the rest of your life, and your child’s. Look for a future blog post on this.
So I arrived at my midwife’s office, full of tender memories of the last time I was there for Bugg’s one-month visit. At two and a half, neither of us was ready to give up nursing. In her sweet toddler voice she would demand her “nee,” and I was happy to oblige, to hold her to my breast and relish those quiet moments with my second, and likely final child.
I handed my midwife the forms from my employer that would allow me to get the bonus HSA funds, and expected a pretty standard appointment. I work out pretty regularly, pay some attention to what I eat, and have always been healthy. I had had two vaginal, unmedicated births and recovered well. Sure there was the stress, especially since the birth of my second child and the move and the renovation and the job change, but I fully expected a clean bill of health.
Any concerns? My midwife asked.
Not really, I said. Wait, there was one thing though. When I nursed the baby, I had noticed a strange bump in the center of my chest, to the right of my sternum, near my right breast. It was probably nothing, I said.
Okay, we’ll check it out.
My sweet midwife lowered the back of the exam table and asked me to slip my arms out of the hospital gown I wore. What I didn’t tell her was that the bump on my chest had become almost familiar, like a friend. I’d been spending a lot of time with my breasts in the past few years, between nursing Belle for nineteen months and Bugg for two and a half years. When I nursed Bugg before bed, I would run my finger over the protrusion on my chest, feeling protective of my body and its peculiarities – like how much bigger my left breast was than my right, and the way the left always seemed to give more milk.
As I lifted my arms above my head, the midwife pressed her firm fingers in concentric circles around each boob, sometimes pausing and pressing, listening with her fingers. She spent some time around the lump on the right side of my sternum. I felt embarrassed, sharing something so private. I felt even more embarrassed worrying about it.
She had the student midwife who was working with her that day feel the spot as well. Then my midwife calmly grabbed my hand and helped me up from the table.
I don’t want to worry you, but I think you should get that spot on your breast checked out, the sweet midwife said. I left the office with a referral in my hand and another item on my to do list.
I can’t tell you what I was feeling then, because I didn’t know. More than fear or worry, truly the worst thing about this new information was that I would need to find the time, the childcare, and the mental energy to make another doctor’s appointment.
I live in Chicago, a ten minute train ride, twenty five minute run, or forty five minute walk from Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I wasn’t going anywhere else to get this bump checked out. Still it took a month and a half for me to make the appointment, while I kept nursing Bugg and burying my fear so deep within me, beneath busyness, overwork, and resentment, that I didn’t tell anyone about the appointment or the fear.
The mammogram wing at Northwestern felt cold the morning I went for my test. I remember the tiles on the floor were pink and blue, and it seemed so strange that I stood on a floor colored like a maternity ward, the colors of new life, colors on the tiny little hospital beanie that I had put on Belle and Bugg’s heads right after they were born. But instead I was waiting for a test that could mean death.
I felt like I could feel the nervousness of everyone in the room as they waited for their names to be called. Foreboding was in the air.
I was terrified.
When it was finally my turn, the mammogram tech took me into a room and smashed my breasts between the glass plates of the mammogram machine. I was thirty seven. I had never been for a mammogram before, since I was less than the recommended starting age of forty. After the scans she stared at the screen.
My God, My God, she kept saying in Spanish. I knew it wasn’t good.
I was taken for a follow-up ultrasound. My last ultrasound had been three years before, Bugg still in my belly. The warm gel was familiar, as were the tech’s fingers tapping on the keys as she found what she wanted and snapped the images. At first she was friendly and chatty, but then she grew quiet and focused. The air in the room felt grim. It was the reverse of the way it had been three years before. Back then, Belle and my husband sat with me as we watched Bugg come alive on the screen, her tiny nose tucked into her chest. We all sat there, watching life within me. This time, I sat alone, wondering what the tech knew about my body that I didn’t.
She called in the radiologist who repeated the ultrasound. After, the radiologist pulled me up to a sitting position. She sat beside me on the hospital bed.
We’re going to do a biopsy, she said. Just to rule out breast cancer.
The ultrasound tech grabbed the Kleenex box. But I didn’t need a tissue. I just stared at the radiologist. I felt very very young all of a sudden, like a small child.
When faced with a dangerous situation, we humans have four choices:
Fight
Flight
Freeze
Fawn
I froze.