This is the first in a series of blog posts about my experiences as a cancer patient and survivor. Before we begin, I want to be clear that all opinions expressed here are my own. Nothing that I say in these posts should be taken as medical advice. If you have any questions or concerns, you need to reach out to a licensed medical professional immediately.

The day began normal enough, I suppose. I got started later than normal–after all, in a Covid world, what’s the point of showering at 5:00 AM to sit on the couch, especially on a Saturday?

I will be honest and admit that I am one of those women who never did what she was supposed to. I was pretty healthy, so I conveniently “forgot” about all of the checkups and self-exams. I can’t really explain what made me do a self-exam in the shower that morning, but I did.

The lump was small and hard. It felt like a marble.

I finished showering, got dressed, and called my husband to come back to the bedroom. I asked him if it was all in my head, and he assured me it wasn’t. I felt unsettled, but I told myself there were any number of things that it could be. I was too young for cancer, after all. I hadn’t even scheduled my first mammogram yet. Cancer is something that older women get.

I sent a message to my primary provider requesting an appointment (no small feat then, as many facilities still weren’t seeing patience face to face). She got me in as quickly as she could. On June 2, I found myself in her office for an exam. She agreed with me that there were several possibilities other than cancer, but she told me the only way to be sure was a mammogram.

In a pre-Covid world, I’d have gone over to Imaging right then. However, at that time, you had to make an appointment. So on June 11, I sat in my car in the parking lot outside Owensboro Health, my heart in my throat, calling a receptionist to let her know I was there for scans.

The mammogram wasn’t bad at all. I’ve always heard they were terrible, painful, scary, you name it. The room was a comfortable temperature and the technician was very gentle. My nerves dissipated…until she started frowning at the computer. She saw something else–something other than the lump I had felt. She wanted some more pictures. She called the radiologist, and another technician. We took more pictures, and then I was taken over for an ultrasound. At the conclusion of the ultrasound, the radiologist and I spoke on the phone.

The technicians had discovered a second lump hiding behind the first.

It was getting harder and harder for me to justify to myself that nothing was wrong, but I was determined to keep a positive outlook.

I saw my first surgeon on June 18. We scheduled a biopsy, performed on June 23.

The biopsy wasn’t too bad. It was done outpatient at Baptist Health. I was awake the entire time. What basically happens is the surgeon is guided by an ultrasound technician. A needle is inserted in your breast and the surgeon takes out tissue for the pathologist to study. A small clip is left behind for future studies and reference. It wasn’t very painful and I didn’t have many issues from the biopsy. I did bruise, but I’m an easy bleeder, so that’s not their fault. (Learn more about needle biopsies from the Cleveland Clinic)

On June 30, one month from the day that I found the lump, I had an appointment to find out the results of the biopsy. I was nervous, sure, but I still had this belief that everything would be fine. The lump was small. I had never felt it before. Surely it was a cyst or a clogged duct or something equally innocuous.

I will be honest and admit two things: first, I don’t remember a lot about that appointment. It kind of blends together in my mind. I vaguely remember the doctor coming in with some interns. I do remember, very clearly, the word “cancer”. The rest is a blur. I forced a smile on my face (which is stupid, knowing that we were all masked and they couldn’t see anyway). I listened to the things they said, and I just kept nodding.

I was determined not to cry, to hold it together, to do anything I could to get out of that exam room without showing weakness. I left the hospital and got into my car. I knew I couldn’t go home, not yet, and I decided to drive to the park and call my mom.

I’m not sure how she understood me, because I only managed a word or two before I started bawling. I should have pulled over right then–I was still a few minutes from the park–but I howled into the phone as I drove and parked in a slot. It was terrible. I gulped and choked and absolutely poured out my heart, letting out all of the reactions that I didn’t let myself have at the hospital. And of course, she sobbed too. I can’t remember another time that I’ve felt that level of anguish.

It was cancer. It was real. My own mortality was screaming at me. Would I be okay? Would I die? Would I… I couldn’t think straight. I cried and cried.

Eventually, I calmed down enough to drive home. My husband and I talked outside on the porch swing for awhile when I got there (he knew where I had been, of course). We had to decide if we were going to tell the children or not before I went inside.

That was a hard decision. But I didn’t want the kids to think that things were worse than they were. They were already noticing that something was going on.

It wasn’t easy to tell them. But I told them that if they had any questions, they should ask me–and they did. I answered all of their questions as best as I could, and I told them that anything else I didn’t know, I’d try to find out. They handled it incredibly well, and I’m so thankful that I took the time to calm down before I talked to them. It was important for them to see me calm and collected. It started things off well, and it was the right choice.

I mentioned earlier that there were two things I had to admit. Here’s the second: I made the wrong decision by holding in my feelings at the hospital. I needed to have that catharsis. It’s completely okay to cry and be upset. You have to be honest with yourself. Once I let my feelings out, I was able to deal with them properly and then I was ready to face the decisions that needed to be made. What kind of treatment was I going to have? Was I going to have surgery? If so, what and when? There were many things that needed to be determined. It had only been a month, but it had been the longest month of my life…or so I thought.

So, that’s the first chapter of this journey. I’ll continue this blog and focus on different aspects of the journey as I go along. Next time, I’ll talk about my actual pathology and diagnosis.

In the meantime, I want to leave you with some important links:

• Breastcancer.org – Performing a Self Exam
• National Breast Cancer – Performing a Self Exam
• CDC.Gov – What is a Mammogram?
• Cancer.org – Mammogram Basics

If you have any questions or concerns, I urge you to do what I did and call your primary doctor.

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:
²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8