And On a Personal Note....

I've been sitting here with the cursor blinking at me for quite a while now. I'm staring at a screen just waiting for letters and words to fill the white void of a textbox. I sit here debating whether I should put this out there for everyone to read when just a day or two ago, I was refusing to tell anyone what was suddenly happening to me.  But ultimately I am saying screw it. I will share it. It's my business and I am choosing to put it out there.  I've always been an open book so why stop now?  Besides, keeping it locked up caused too many moments of melt down over the last two days so maybe by just putting it out there, it'll be like a form of emotional release.

Although I am sure that 99.9% of my readers are female, I will put out a forewarning if there is anyone of the male gender out there right now. You might as well skip this post. It's one of those posts. You know...girl stuff.  So just move on along.  Treat it like one of those awkward commercials on TV where a mom is teaching her daughter about tampons or "sanitary napkins".  Just click and move forward.

Alright now that that is out of the way, I'll just be blunt.

I found a lump.

And anyone that is female reading this knows exactly what I am talking about. A lump. The dreaded, panic inducing breast lump.

But let's rewind a moment.

It was late Sunday night, right around midnight actually after a very long day with the girls (what day isn't long with them though, really?).  While tending to an itch, I discovered it quite accidentally on my left side.  I froze for a moment. Just stopped dead. My eyebrows furrowed and I calmly told myself I must have something inside my shirt. You know, like I don't know..a large piece of food or lint or God anything.  I threw my shirt aside and felt against bare skin.  Shit. Holy shit.  That can't be right.

So there I am late on a Sunday night discovering for the very first time in my life that I have a breast lump.  Everything became very quiet, almost silent. Just the soft hum of the fan and the soft static over Madi's baby monitor. I sat there with my hand covering myself and held my breath. The rational part of my brain screamed at me to take a breath and relax.  I know the stats. Something close to 80% of discovered lumps are nothing to worry about. A lump doesn't mean the big bad C word. It doesn't mean chemo and mastectomies. It could be any number of harmless things. That is what my rational side said.  My irrational side?  The side that was slowly beating the crap out of the rational side? Well, that one was screaming at me, "Oh my God..you are so totally screwed!  So...totally...screwed!" 

I started to shake and my stomach dropped like on the downhill of a roller coaster.  I suddenly felt sick to my stomach and couldn't fight the feeling of utter panic that was consuming me.  There I was late on a Sunday night discovering for the very time in my life that I have a lump and I was completely and utterly alone.  I slowly turned around and was assaulted by the realization.  I couldn't just march up to Matt, shove aside my shirt and demand him to tell me if he thought "this" felt odd.  I couldn't beg him to tell me it'd be ok and that I was being silly. I couldn't watch as he sat me down infront of the computer and showed me the research that would say odds were in my favor. And the most important part, I couldn't collapse into his open arms and let myself completely surrender to the irrational side.  No. I was completely and utterly alone.  Set aside the air conditioning breaking during the summer, or all of my yardtools revolting at the beginning of lawn season, forget the 5 day stomach virus that I have yet to recover the weight from, forget the endless puddles of urine and the wet princess panties of potty training, forget the tape worm ordeal and the all nighters with sick children.  Forget all of that and just know that at that very moment--very late on a Sunday night--that I realized I have never felt so alone in my entire married life.

Once composed enough to get myself down to the computer, I did email Matt. I debated for about 1/2 second about whether I should just keep it from him because he has so many other worries but in the end, that is not how our marriage works.  We both lack the ability to keep things from one another. As I always tell people, I tell Matt if I buy a $5 pair of shoes on clearance. It's just the way we work. No secrets. No trying to protect one another. Good or bad, it's all laid on the table.  But I think any of you civilians that have read this blog long enough already know how unreliable Naval communication is.  Matt's email system went down. Oh it was up long enough for him to read my email about the discovery a few hours after I sent it but it went down and didn't allow him to respond or for any of my updates to go through.  It was about 12 hours later I received a very concerned phonecall from him. 

I gave myself a couple days to absorb it all. To constantly feel myself up to the point of bruising myself. To just try to sit back and collect my thoughts.  I finally decided to make a call to the dr eventhough I was doing a pretty damn good job convincing myself it was probably nothing more than a cyst.  I won't go into the details of how our lovely military appointment schedulers tried to make me wait a month to be seen and will just cut to the chase. I lucked out and caught a cancelleation at the last second.  "Be here in one hour," they said.  I threw down the phone, packed food and toys for Alyssa and Madi and packed up all three kids to make the trip out to the dr's (I really, really have to switch now that we have moved).

This post could go on for days so let's see if I can cut this a bit shorter.  The girls sat like angels in the waiting room. I really must say having a responsible 6th grader kicks ass.  The nurse took me back and asked me questions like if I was in pain-to which I replied "Only because I can't stop obsessively checking myself!"  The dr came in, talked to me a bit then got down to business.  I really rather liked her if I could just overlook the fact she felt the need to comment about how small I was. Gee, thanks, doc. Really?  You think I didn't notice and just wanted to bring it to my attention incase I had missed it? Want to offer me some in house implants while you're at it?  Good God.  Welp, just another story to lock away in the vault of why I am forever horribly self conscious.  So once she became professional again, she did a very thorough exam and declared that she belives it is most likely a fibrocystic condition. Basically cysts that form during certain times of your cycle. Nothing serious, nothing of concern but she said keep an eye on "them" (she claimed she felt more than the one I originally did although damned if I can find what she was talking about) and to come back in a month. If they are still hanging around, she will do an ultrasound at that point. 

So hopefully this will be nothing.  Hopefully this will just be yet another fun phase I'll hit in the "oh yay! happy, happy, joy, joy I am getting older!" part of my life.  Hopefully by the end of this month, my mind can rest easy once again like it did before that very late night moment on Sunday.