Chapter 6: The Lump
One week after my 36th birthday I was sitting in my living room in Los Angeles with my “Dear Sweet Adorable Auntie June” (aka D.S.A.A.J., my mom’s half sister and twin of my Aunt Jane). She occupied the couch. Her hair was coming in nicely—a beautiful wavy gray. Next to her sat my six-foot ladder. Hooked to the ladder using the industrial clamps off of my desk lamp was an I.V. drip of pure vitamin C. The I.V. connected to her body via a port-a-cath under her collarbone. She was supplementing chemotherapy with this alternative and untested but anecdotally amazing cure for cancer. She was in the middle of her second battle with breast cancer. Her doctors found metastatic disease and an entirely different type of breast cancer in her breasts (she had a lumpectomy at her first round) at her five-year check-up. Metastatic disease is the nasty outcroppings of cancer cells that can hide and grow in other parts of your body after you think you’re done. Typically they have the same pathology as the original cancer. They are what we are all afraid of. She had mets on her lungs and in her thyroid. She was working very hard at kicking this second round and had been treating herself naturally and homeopathically already for a couple of years. She was ill. And weak. And in love with a wonderful man and was very much looking forward to seeing her son graduate from high school that spring.
She left that afternoon. I gripped her like I would never see her again, even though I knew I would. She walked out of my front door and I went to the bathroom.
As I walked into my tiny bathroom I felt the prickle of an itch under my right armpit, just to the outside of my right breast. Lo and behold, there was a funny lump. That itched. Hmm.
I swear to you the first thing I thought was, “Fuck. It’s cancer.”
Now, I will not lie to you and tell you I haven’t thought that I somehow MADE the lump into cancer just by having that first thought. Because I have thought that. However, I have forced myself to believe that I, in fact, was (am) psychic (aha!). Not doomsday. Or the simple fact that sometimes, you just know. I felt the lump more. It was
Shaped exactly like an almond. Practically as if someone had slipped an almond into my body right under my skin.
Itchy.
Hard.
Not like a pea. Or even on my breast. Or anywhere near my breast.
Immovable.
Visible.
I then did the breast self-check at least four times. I didn’t feel anything else unusual. Still, I found that I was breathing hard, my cheeks were flushed and I was wishing with all of my might that D.S.A.A.J. was still sitting on my living room couch. Because, she would know what to do.
However, she was on her way to North Carolina. Instead, I yelled for my husband. He, being a good husband, and seeing my face, said, “Sweetie, it’s nothing. If it’s still there in the morning, call the doctor.” I started to breath again and disengaged momentarily from my panic to take care of my nearly three-year-old daughter.
I called my gynecologist the next morning. She asked me where I was in my cycle. I was ovulating. She said, “Wait two weeks until you get your period. See if it changes.”
Two weeks later I had a dimple in my right breast (yes, it can look like the opposite of a lump), PLUS another flat almond-shaped lump on the top quadrant of the same breast closest to my armpit. To top it all off, I could feel a knot the size of a walnut in my armpit.
Things were getting nutty.
I was officially freaked out. I knew enough about lymph nodes and how it’s bad if they’re swollen when you also have a suspicious lump. I was back to panicking.
In the meantime, I called my Mom (I think she cried), my sister (she was incredulous), and my friend Bailey.
