The doctor came into the room, introduced herself, and immediately said "Everything looks fine." I didn't realize how tense I was until that moment had passed. I had been secretly scared for about a month, ever since I started having pain in my right breast and found a small lump. It seems that it was a cyst brought on by hormones and I should expect them from time to time.
It was my very first mammogram, and I'm glad it's over and done with. Having my boobs squashed in the x-ray machine was not a fun experience. Neither is thinking that a part of your body is just sitting there, waiting to get cancer. But with statistics like 1 in 8 women getting breast cancer, the risk is too great to ignore. So instead of just wondering, I went ahead and got the mammogram. If it turned out to be cancer, we would have caught it early on. If it wasn't, well, then I'd have a great "baseline" image of my breasts.
With October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I was all too aware of the cause. The pink ribbons were a constant reminder that if I was to find out I had breast cancer, there is lots of information and help out there for me. Just about every magazine in the waiting room had articles on breast cancer and every catalog had pink ribbon items that you can buy with some of the profits going to support the cause. The waiting room itself was decorated like a giant pink ribbon monster came in and vomited all over the place. Pink, pink, pink, staring me in the face with it's cute, feminine color, when I knew it actually represented a deadly disease that kills thousands of women (and hundreds of men) each year.
But not me. Not right now. And from now on, I'm going to do those silly self breast exams in the shower and I'm going to keep the little pink ribbon pin they gave me at the clinic as a reminder. A reminder of my own scare, my new awareness, and of all the women out there that actually experienced the things that my brain imagined would happen to me and my family if my right boob was trying to kill me.
- Click here! A click a day helps fund mammograms!
- National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
- Susan G. Komen for the Cure
- National Breast Cancer Foundation
2 comments:
I'm so glad everything turned out well for you. I hope I have the same result. At this point I'm not thinking cancer, and neither is the doctor, but I'll breathe easier when I have some definite answers.
What a relief! I'm very glad for you. That was a very well written post.
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