People Let Me Tell You 'bout My Breast Friends

I got back my first mammogram.

It was not good.

When they CALL YOU and tell you to "come back in for some more angles and further testing", it's not because the tech was enjoying the view, if you know what I mean. It's more like, we don't like what we saw... not at all. And, relatively speaking, I'm a smart gal when it comes to this kind of thing. And, sadly, I know from past experience that this kind of phone call could spell trouble with a capital "B" and I mean boob, you spell it "breast' and we're talking possible cancer.


Having danced with the "Big C" before for another type - because one type apparently ISN'T enough for me - I know full well what a cad he really is. I say 'he" because even a really mean woman wouldn't take another gal's boobs. It just seems pointlessly cruel.

But, guys who lack boobs (and no, 'man boobs' do NOT count!), seem to invent ways to see just how tough a gal really is. It is the only conceivable explanation for the mammography machine and the required removal of every shredded pretense of dignity that you may once have possessed. Men inventing the procedure would also explain why the attendant is required to grope you like an over-eager bad prom date who skips out without even buying you dinner or being carted off to "juvie hall" to pay for the experience at your expense. It would also explain why, with tears in your eyes and running down your cheeks, you tell the attendant, "NO! I'm just fine! Let's get this done!!"

I can virtually guarantee that if the male inventors of the mammography machine had their "man berries" shoved into a vise and crushed like grapes, there would be a sudden uptick in non-invasive technology and a whole lot less groping. Well, maybe everywhere but San Francisco...

As I was there today for the repeat mammogram and the further procedures that were to fill my day, the morbid side of me set in and I began to realize something... it truly begs consideration of this "fact"... the diagnosis is in my "good breast".

Yeah, I realize that sounds ridiculous because you aren't supposed to play favorites, but the left side has always been a bit, well, perkier and better shaped than the right. Until now... I'm beginning to wonder about just what might have caused the perkiness since that is the side currently being scrutinized, smashed and radiated within an inch of its life.

Questions popped into my head from the second that I got off the phone to make this "fun" appointment. The "dread" part hasn't taken over because I refuse to allow myself to wallow in what might be until I am presented with full evidence of what is going on and how we can handle it.

Hmm. Bad choice of words there. I think I have been "handled" enough today, thank you very much.

It sounds almost sacrilegious to talk about the body as if it was merely the sum of its parts be they great or small. Yet, I have grown quite accustomed to having my breasts be right where there are. The thought of them being in a lab smear on a microscope slide is slightly disconcerting. And further, the consideration that they may or may not both be going away entirely is disturbing. I am not a fan of being totally flat-chested, it being a native condition for a majority of my life. But to be fair, what I have now isn't much more than that since it's mostly the accumulation of too much junk food and every time I lose weight, they go away.. the boobs that is, not the junk food.

And I can't consider going with a 'single'. That would just look stupid. Like half a mustache... The "twins" have been together forever... quite literally. They are a matched pair, or at least as matched as my asymmetry allows. There are two of them and they have been side by side through the training bra stage to the sports bras and to the push up bras that made me look like I had something when I don't.

But what if I don't have anything there in the due fullness of time? Can I live with that? *SIGH*

Yep. It's just a pound of flesh. Quite literally in my case, I am sad to say... the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

Of course, I am not trying to jump the gun. We don't have a definitive diagnosis yet. I'm just trying to sort out what life might be like. Because right now, I do not know what comes next. I truly don't. We wait for word from the doctor who was reading all the various tests to see what his clinical eye and wisdom decrees to be the next step if indeed a next step is to be taken at all.

The worst part of this is that it is an area of my life where I need help and prayers from those who love me in spite of me. I have to tell them news that may turn out to be just a big scare and mean nothing in the long run or which may well alter the landscape of life for us all. I hate making other people feel sad, particularly when I am the reason for the sadness. And, oddly enough, it seems like these earth shattering announcements regarding my health have always fallen in December. Ho, Ho, Ho! A very un-merry Christmas present to say the least. Try to gift wrap this kind of information and make it exciting... uh, not so much.

I'll try to remain positive about all of this.

I keep talking about needing to lose weight and if a couple of boobs gets the ball rolling, so to speak, then so be it. That isn't to say I'm happy about the thought of it. Because I am not. We have been taught to think in our minds "come what may and love it". So, if this is something that is to come to me, then I reckon I'll get to learn to do something besides shop for bras... which never fit right anyway.

There is one aspect of the whole cancer issue that IS truly troubling... the people that might be left behind should this get ugly.

While I'm a pretty bright gal who managed to graduate from school and understand that I'm not the center of the universe, I'd like to believe that the people I love might consider me to be somewhat important and maybe even nigh unto irreplaceable.

Is that vanity?

If so, then chalk that up to my fragile ego needing a stroke or twelve. We ALL want to be someones world or at least a significant enough chunk of their world that if we were gone they'd miss us once in a while.

But my ego is sufficiently well developed enough to not want to die at all. Too many lives NEED me. At least that's what I tell myself when I'm tired, cranky and worn out from running the calendars of everyone else on the planet...


I have one favor to ask though. Keep my and my two breast friends in your prayers. That really isn't such an odd request. Though I may indeed be a charter member of the I.B.T.C. (Itty Bitty Titty Committee), I have no desire to be the president of the pushing up daisies chapter of "so long! it's been good to know you!"

I still feel like I have things to do, people to help, places to go and adventures to enjoy. I'm just praying that Our Father feels the same way...