You've Got Cancer

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Three months after I buried my beloved and whimsical Father, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was not a total surprise because I had been flirting with some discomfort in my breast and underarm since the previous October.

The mammogram I had in November did not show anything; perhaps an ultrasound would have shown more, but my hospital did not routinely do ultrasounds at that time. Sometime during the next few months, I felt a lump in my left breast. It hurt. I put ice packs and heat packs on it and it hurt less. It hurt more at night than in the morning.

I went to my doctor sometime in April. We talked about the lump. He felt it. “Cancer is not supposed to hurt.” Exact quote from several health professionals. Mine did. Both the doctor and I cautiously agreed it might be a cyst. I had a cyst 15 years previously; it had been lanced and drained.

I was visiting my daughter for a week in Germany. My father was slowing up dramatically. I wasn’t ready for anything more than the idea of a cyst. 

Fast forward. Dad died May 30th. The funeral was June 6th.  I had to immediately sell his house as interest on the reverse mortgage was rapidly multiplying. I hired a fabulous woman. Carrie, who helped me clean out a basement that held 70 years of memories. My Mother, who had died in 2013, had saved every card and piece of memorabilia of her long life. There was her yellowed satin wedding dress; there were baby gift cards from when I was born.

My lump continued to hurt. I returned to my doctor in August, a week after the closing on Dad’s house. 

“My lump hurts,” I told him.

“Let’s get a diagnostic mammogram,” he said.

I went to the hospital the next day. Mammogram, ultrasound, immediate biopsy by nice Greek doctor (I’m half Greek, it humored me). Next day the phone call. 

“You’ve got cancer.”