The Piercing Of My Breast

What follows is terribly long. I almost feel I should apologize, but the length of the experience can only be conveyed by length of narrative. This is a story of my heart. My heart and a lump in my breast.

I met you on cool, Monday afternoon. Winter was enjoying her last hurrahs and the tree limbs hung bare outside my window. I wasn’t looking for you. Expecting you. You were, in fact, the farthest thing from my mind. But my hand brushed across my breast as I reached for something on the far side of my desk and there you were. My breath caught for a moment. Surely I was wrong. I put down what I had in my hand, reached inside my blouse and felt again. You were really there. A lump. Hard. Larger than a pea, smaller than an olive. I guess I would say you were about the size of a peanut outside of its shell. The thought passed through my mind that this was a before-and-after moment. That for the rest of my life I would think of everything that happened before this moment as “before”, and everything that happened after, as “after”.

My heart beat a little faster as I reached for the phone to call my doctor. I was midway into dialing her number when I looked at the clock, 5:05. Of course it was after 5 o’clock. I had just found a lump in my breast and it was after 5 o’clock. My doctor takes Tuesdays off, so I knew it would be Wednesday before she could work me in, if she could work me in. The “if” gave me something new to worry about for a moment.

I tried to call my mother. She was out. I tried to call one of my best-friend. She was out. I tried call another one of my best friends. She was out too. I tried to call my ex-husband. I got his voice mail. I called my sister. I got her voice mail too. So for a while, I was just there. Alone with you. Alone with you and a thousand thoughts that came rushing into my mind like a dam that had burst.

I checked again, to see if you were really there. You were.

My sister called me back in about ½ an hour. The first thing she did was asked me how long had it been there. The question threw me off balance. Immediately I thought, ‘What do you mean how long has it been there? You think maybe I’ve had it for 3 or 4 months and just this evening decided to get worried about it?’ But hot on the heels of that thought was the realization that I had no idea how long you’d been there. Sometime – not too long ago – the AMA or the American Cancer Society, or someone who’s supposed to know about these things, had decided that breast self-examination made very little difference in early detection of breast cancer, and I had stopped doing it. For all I knew, you had been there for months. Or you had popped into existence 10 seconds prior to my finding you. I didn’t know. The possibility that you might go away occurred to me, so I checked you again to see if you were still there. You were. Meanwhile my sister went into a monologue on the importance of breast self-examination. Thank you sister, dear. I think I got that part down now.

Then my sister, the selfless rock of support that she is, started in on me about how terrible it was for her to receive a phone call like this. Had I even thought about this? How much it would upset her for me to call her this way? Out of the blue? With something like this? I knew in that moment that I was talking to the wrong person. I think I made up a doorbell or something. I know I got off the phone with my sister.

Finally, I talked to someone reasonable and actually supportive. We talked about how something like 90% of all breast lumps are benign. We talked about cysts. I’ve had cysts before and none of them felt like you, but I managed to convince myself – at least my logical self, if not my primal self – that you were a cyst. No big deal. I’d see the Doctor. She’d drain you with a needle, and that would be that.

A needle.

In my breast.

Cross my heart. Hope for the breast. Stick a needle in my breast.

Ick.

The next morning, I called the doctor’s office and got an appointment for Wednesday. Probably some other things happened that day too, but I have no idea what they were. When Wednesday came, I was so scattered, I managed only to shower and dress for the doctor’s appointment. No makeup made it onto my face. No curls were put in my hair. No stockings made it onto my legs. No breakfast was eaten. It occurred to me that I wasn’t certain if I’d eaten breakfast, lunch, or dinner the day before. I had no idea. None.

At the doctor’s office, we talked about the lump for a moment and the nurse said she’d get me a gown, for me to take off my top. I said, “Forget the gown. Since my divorce in 2001, the most physically intimate relationship I have is with the two of you (the doctor & her nurse). I don’t need a gown.” I peeled off my top and sat down on the examination table. I showed you to the doctor, and yes, you were really a lump. The doctor had me move my arm around at different angles, while she felt your contours and your thickness. She called for a needle, and I asked her how much this was going to hurt. She said, “No worse than having your blood drawn.” I thought, ‘okay.’ But it felt worse than getting my blood drawn. That’s because she took three stabs (literally) at trying to drain you and you weren’t draining. The reason you weren’t draining was that you weren’t a cyst. You were a mass. In other words, you were a tumor.

I had to let that word find a home in my mind.

A tumor.

Okay.

I had a tumor.

I got scheduled for a diagnostic mammogram and a sonogram at the hospital on Friday. I asked the doctor when I would have the results from those, and she said Friday afternoon.

I’m reasonably sure something happened on Thursday, but I don’t have the vaguest idea what it was.

Friday was much like Wednesday. I was scattered. I showered and dressed, and I think I managed to do my hair, but no makeup made it onto my face. No stockings made it onto my legs. It even never occurred to me to eat. I may not have eaten on Thursday. Or Wednesday. Or Tuesday. I may not have eaten a single bite since I found you.

As I walked up the stairs leading from the parking lot to the hospital, I noticed the chipped paint on one of the steps and my mind took a photograph. I knew I’d be able to see the paint on that step in my mind for the rest of my life.

In the waiting room, I had a magazine that was 3 years old. Three years! But it didn’t matter, because I couldn’t read it anyway. All I saw on every page was that I had a tumor in my breast. I turned page after page, but that’s all I ever saw. “You have a tumor in your breast.”

The mammogram was like a mammogram, but longer and even more uncomfortable than usual. The sonogram was at least interesting. I got to see you. And you looked amazingly like you felt. You didn’t appear to have any tentacles leading off of you, and I knew that was a good thing. I didn’t know enough to be able to tell anything else about what the sonogram meant. I wanted to ask questions about you, about the way you looked, but I knew they fired sonographers for answering patient’s questions, and I didn’t want the sonographer to get fired. So I didn’t ask. When it was over, I sat up, dropped the gown and realized I should have waited until the sonographer left the room to do that. She looked vaguely shocked. How could I explain to her that I was on auto-pilot, that you had knocked me out of my usual orbit, and I wasn’t quite myself. I murmured an apology and put on my bra and blouse.

On her way out the door, the sonographer told me I’d get the results on Monday.

Monday!

Damn!

I was expecting them that afternoon. But okay. Monday. I could make it to Monday.

I called my sister that evening to let her know it was going to be Monday before I would know anything, but while we were on the phone, another call beeped in. It was the doctor with the lab report. She told me I needed to see a surgeon to have you biopsied, or maybe just removed. She said she’d make the referral and the surgeon’s office should call me on Monday. I asked the surgeon’s name and scribbled it on a scrap of paper. It was the name of a national makers of frozen food dishes. I spelled it wrong.

I got back on the phone with my sister and told her. We talked some more about how upsetting this was to her. I may or may not have apologized.

After talking to my sister, I called my mother. My mother was out of town, visiting her sister who had lung cancer and was in the hospital. When she answered the phone I said, “I have news, but I don’t want to talk to you when your in the hospital room.” I asked her to make small talk with me then, and then call me later when you could talk. So we made small talk, and then I talked with my aunt. She was doing a bit better. I told her how much I loved her, and promised myself that once this was over, I’d go to visit her. To see her one last time, to stroke her hair, hold her hand, tell her how precious she was to me, and tell her all the wonderful memories she had gifted me with in her life-time. Yes, when this was over, I’d go visit my aunt.

Later Mother called and I told her The News. She said that because my aunt was doing so much better, she was leaving tomorrow. She’d fly home, spend the next two days, and then drive to me Monday so she could be with me to visit the surgeon. For a moment, I was just overwhelmed in the relief of her coming. I wouldn’t be alone with you anymore. My mother would be there. We could face you together. It was such a relief. Until that moment, being with you had been such an alone thing.

On Saturday, my dear friend Charlie’s mother died. I wept like a child when I read the news. Tears that made no sense. I didn’t even know Charlie’s mother. I truly didn’t know Charlie all that well. But she was Charlie’s mum, and now she was gone, and crying seemed to be my special skill those days. So I cried.

And then Sunday evening, I got a phone call from my mother that her sister had died. I sobbed, I sobbed, into the phone for just a moment, then excused myself. I got a tissue, blew my nose, and tried to be there for my mother. We talked about hospitals, and quality of life issues, and how my aunt had gotten seven years from a two year death sentence with lung cancer, and agreed it was for the best. And maybe it was, but it didn’t matter, because in my family, everything is for the best.

After half an hour or so, I was reasonably certain I had pulled it together enough to call my cousin and tell him how terribly sorry I was for his loss, what a grand lady his mother had been, and I asked him what I could do to help him right now. He told me how worried he was about me, and suddenly I knew that he knew about you, and damn-it-to-hell, why had Mother told him? But then I knew. She told him because she was trying to balance being there for him and for the funeral, and being there for me. So okay. He knew. I assured him I was fine, and he assured me he was fine, and neither of these things were true, but it was somehow comforting to say them to each other, so we did.

Monday morning came and the alarm went off, but I didn’t get up. In fact, I couldn’t seem to do much of anything but watch the phone, and it keeps not ringing. By 2:00 I called the surgeon’s office myself, expecting a receptionist, but getting instead a voice mail system. I left my name, the name of my referring physician, the fact that I had been referred to have a breast biopsy, and my phone number. By 6:15 I reconciled myself to the fact the surgeon was not going to call me on Monday as promised.

My mother, however, did call on Monday. She calls to let me know that the funeral will be held on Friday, and that she and my father would drive here Tuesday to be with me, and then we could all go to my Aunt’s hometown on Thursday for the funeral. We also agreed I should call my doctor the next day and let her know the surgeon hadn’t called me. Except we were forgetting that the next day was Tuesday, and I couldn’t call my doctor and tell her, so on Tuesday, I called and left the same message on voice mail for the surgeon and got the same response.

Tuesday evening my parents arrived in town. They called from their hotel room and announced that they were coming to get me for dinner. I managed to make it to the shower, get dressed, put on makeup and fix my hair for my parents. When they pulled up outside my apartment, I went down to greet them, and no one gets out of the car to hug me. I swallowed that back, and got in the backseat where I learned we were going to a restaurant I hate for dinner. At the restaurant, the food all seems to greasy and nothing tasted right, but I ate it anyway. I’d been not eating far too much for far too long, and I knew that had to stop. I could feel myself slipping away a few pounds at a time.

Over dinner, my parents did what my parents always do. They announced The Change of Plans.
This is always what happens with my parents. There is a plan, and there is what actually happens, and the latter rarely has much resemblance at all to the former.

Since the surgeon still has not called, they’d decided the three of us should leave first thing in the morning to go to be with your cousin. First thing. To them, “first thing” this means about 7:30. I wasn’t packed. I had a sink full of dirty dishes. I had piles of laundry. I needed cat food. I wasn’t in the least prepared. I had actually thought that this once, this once, they wouldn’t do this to me. But they did, and I felt like a fool for not having anticipated it. And just beneath feeling like a fool was another feeling, and this feeling was anger. It wasn’t reasonable. It wasn’t appropriate. But it was there. I tried to choke it down. I tried to just go on. I tried to talk reasonably to myself about how when I would stop on the way home for cat food, get packed, and it would all be okay.

But it wasn’t working. The weight of the anger settled in with the weight of the grief and the weight of the fear and it all became too much. There was a six year old in my mind screaming that it should matter that I have a lump in my breast. It should matter that I need to talk to my doctor. I should get to be important too, even if I’m not dead.

I reacted in the obvious way: I started having seizures. My attempts at small talk were hollow and edgy. My movements were jerky. I couldn’t concentrate or keep my balance. Little blips were missing from the continuity of time, and I was having difficulty following the conversation. And worse, my mother knew I was having seizures. She wasn’t saying anything but she knew. Then I fell into an old pattern. I got angry about myself about the seizures. This, in turn, made me have more seizures. You’d think that by now, I’d have learned not to do that, get into the angry, seizure cycle. But I hadn’t. I haven’t.

As we left the restaurant my mother turned to my father and said, “Dear, I’m going to drop you off at the hotel and then go back to Lily’s apartment with Lily for a while.” When we arrived at my apartment she asked how I was. I open my mouth expecting to assure her that I’m fine, but what I said was, “I don’t know… I’m all over the place.” And then I started crying and having more seizures. The world was doing somersaults around me. There was no longer even the possibility of trying to hide the seizures.

“You don’t have to go Lily. Everyone will understand if you don’t go. Aunt J. will understand if you don’t go.”

There are a million reasons I wanted to go to this funeral, but there are also a million reasons why my going could have been a bad idea. The biggest of these was the very real possibility that I might get there, fall apart, have seizures, and make the whole thing about me. This felt like the most selfish thing I could possibly do, make my aunt’s funeral about me.

Finally, after way too much melodrama, it was decided I should not go. I should stay home. Talk to my doctor, find the surgeon, find out about you.

Once the decision was made, Mother and I started to talk. The way we usually talk. We started to connect. She read to me what she had written at the hospital while she was staying with her sister the week before. She read about how frail my aunt was, how important it had been for her to be there with her. She read about cutting off the last lock of hair the chemo had left on my aunt’s head. She read. I listened. We both cried.

I read to her what I had written about you. About my fears. About how I felt stopped dead in my tracks. About my anger at the surgeon for not having called yet. I read. She listened. We both cried.

I finally get the hug I’ve been waiting so long for.

And that night I made a strategic decision. I would cope with you by reading Jane Austen. Jane Austen would be safe. Nothing truly dreadful ever happens in a Jane Austen novel. It all works out in the end, and there is much to laugh at. There is the added bonus that I’ve read all of Jane Austen’s novels before, so there won’t even be a worry factor for when things are looking grim. I grab Pride and Prejudice and read myself to sleep.

So Wednesday, my parents left early in the morning for the funeral, and I waited until 8 o’clock to call my doctor. Someone new answered the phone. I asked to speak to the nurse, but she was already with a patient. I ask to leave a message and tell New Girl my situation. New girl had me spell my name and repeat my phone number twice.

I spent the rest of that day watching the phone, and it never rang. I cried. A lot. It began to feel like I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. You know, the episode where there is a lump in your breast and but you become invisible to all the doctors as they disappear into the mist with the sound of mad laughter emanating from the darkness.

At about 6:30 that evening, my mother calls me from my aunt’s house. “Well?”

“They haven’t called.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. Not kidding.”

And for a moment we just sat there in silence, stunned at this turn of events. I ask about my cousin and the rest of the family and asked for some reassurance that it was really okay for me not to be there. I’ve only had epilepsy since 1991. I haven’t known what my extended family knows about it. If they know why suddenly, 15 years ago, I stopped attending family events. I found out, finally, that they do know. It’s a relief and an embarrassment. But it’s more a relief. I hung up the phone and cried some more. What the hell?

The next morning, New Girl calls and says, “Now what is it you want a referral for?” For just a moment I entertained fantasies of crawling through the phone and strangling New Girl with the phone cord. So slowly, and with as much guilt as I can possibly lay on, I explain to New Girl that I have a Lump in My Breast, that I’ve been referred to a Surgeon who was supposed to call me on Monday to find out if the Lump is Cancer, and that it is now Thursday and the Surgeon has not called me back, so I need Dr. H. to tell me what to do. Then I ask New Girl if she has any ideas about what I should do? Is there a protocol for when you might have Cancer and the Surgeon’s office won’t return your call? Surely, I don’t need to bother Dr. H. at all. Surely New Girl can tell me what to do?

New Girl sort of stammered and stuttered, and said she’d get Dr. H. the message right away. I hung up the phone and cried. Probably more even than New Girl cried for the way I’d treated her. Crying seemed to be my new talent.

In about half an hour, the phone rang and it was the surgeon’s office. Suddenly they were interested in talking to me. They had an opening on Monday at 3:00. Could I take it? Yes. I could take it.I spent the rest of day reading Pride and Prejudice and crying until my mother called that evening, after the funeral. I told her I finally had an appointment and when. She told me that she would stay at my Aunt’s house until Saturday afternoon to help my cousin clean up, and then she’d come to stay with me until we could see the surgeon.

On Friday, I decided to post the bits of writing I’d been doing about you to the blog. The result was overwhelming. Words of encouragement began flooding my inbox. A cancer patient in Minnesota dusted off her detective skills, figured out who and where I was and called me. We talked. We talked for hours. It was such an incredible relief to talk to her. Especially because she said at the beginning of the conversation, “You must be thinking about the “C” word a lot.” And oh god, I was. And to her, I could talk about the “C” word. She never found it necessary to assure me I didn’t have it. She just let me talk about my fears. And then we made this wonderful discovery: that even without you, she and I were destined to be friends. We had a lot in common, too much in common, things in common I wouldn’t wish on anyone, and we liked each other. We talked, we cried, we laughed. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as grateful to anyone for hunting me down as I am to her. She literally carried me through my affair with you.

The next day I got shaken from the partial coma I’ve been in. Mother was coming. I washed two weeks of dishes and two weeks of laundry. Got clean sheets in the guest room, and set out clean towels. I went to the grocery store an got the things my mother likes to have – fresh fruit, spring water, some special nut bread from the bakery for breakfast. I got more done in that day than I had gotten done in the 10 days before it. I vacuumed the carpet and scrubbed out the tub.

As I straightened up the bathroom, I found the bit of bloody gauze from the attempted aspiration. I started to throw it away, but I instead I kept it. I had also kept the letter from the hospital telling me it was urgent I seek further medical evaluation of the tumor. I kept the bill from the Dr.’s office. I kept the piece of paper where I had written down the surgeon’s name and the piece of paper where I had scribbled “Monday 3 pm”. I wished I could print out the mental photograph of the chipped paint on the stairs. I realized I was starting a scrap book. I wondered if my sanity was going to end up inside the scrap book and not in my head.

Mother arrived late Saturday night with a car full of my aunt’s fine clothes. She said she was too tired to lug it all up to my apartment for us to go through, but that she’d pick out something nice for me. I said, “I want anything in a size 2 or 4.” She agreed that I was the only one who could wear a size 2 or 4, and so it would be done.

I think we went somewhere for dinner. I don’t remember where. I’m pretty sure we did something on Sunday. I don’t remember what. I want to say we watched a movie. That would make sense. But the truth is I don’t remember. Not a single damned minute of the whole damned day. I just know it passed.

I do remember telling her the name of the surgeon. I remember because we started calling him “Dr. Lean Cuisine.”

On Monday, we managed to arrive at the surgeon’s office on time with makeup and everything, but I had forgotten to print up my medical history (which is extensive), the list of medications I’m on (a list of not insignificant length), and a list of the drugs I’m allergic too (a list of epic proportions). When we got to the doctor’s office, they handed me all this information to fill out which asked for these things. One a good day, I’m hit and miss about this stuff. This was not a good day. I was nervous. I was having seizures. FOX news was blaring in the background, which made all of this worse. Getting this information from my brain was like pulling teeth. I had to do the snapping the fingers of my right hand a lot to stimulate my left brain into remembering words (I don’t know if I got a lot of attention for this or not). The blanks on the forms weren’t big enough for the information they asked for, so I had this whole series of numbers of topics which were covered on the back of the page. Finally I turned in the forms. Immediately upon doing so, I realized I had left off two of the medications I was taking and three of my drug allergies. Carefully, deliberately, I named each of the fingers on my left had after a drug so I would remember to tell the doctor.

The waiting room was small and shared by two other physicians in addition to Dr. Lean Cuisine. It was full of waiting patients, almost all of whom had brought at least one family member with them. Children were waiting in their parents laps or running about the room careening off of furniture, walls, and various patients.

One of the families included an elderly woman (Mamma), her two daughters (bitch and bitchier), a son (Bubba), and two grand-daughters (belonging to bitch). Mamma appeared to have Alzheimer’s and every few minutes would ask where they were. “At the doctor’s, Mamma.” One of her off-spring would yell at her. Mamma is ill kempt, poorly dressed, and clearly dazed. For a moment I entertain fantasies of rescuing Mamma from the horror of her children. Bitchier was Mamma’s Medical Power of Attorney. She refused to sign any of the forms, because she didn’t want to be held responsible for any of Mamma’s bills. Bitch was enormous, I mean truly, horrifically, enormous. She was wrapped entirely in Lycra, and bits of her were falling out. Bits one would have preferred not to be confronted with. Her two daughters sat on the floor in front of her, the eldest one was decked out in Lycra just like Bitch, but her outfit had the added bonus of rhinestone studs which spell out proudly that she is “Mamma’s Girl”. Bubba went in and out of the waiting room between cigarettes carrying a plastic sippy cup. My mother and I decide in whispers that this cup was filled with moonshine made from the still in the back of their house in the woods. A still which is guarded by a couple of well trained blood hounds, and a few sawed off shot guns. Bitch talked incessantly and loudly on her cell phone, a thing which caused the man seated next to us to roll his eyes heavenward in a plea for divine intervention. It was not forthcoming.

FOX news was excitedly covering the news that Zacharias Moussaoui had been found guilty and was eligible for the death penalty. They seemed to have dragged up every the family of every 9/11 casualty they could to see how badly they want blood revenge. Alice Hogland (mother of Mark Bingham, one of the heroes of flight 93) gives an impassioned speech against the death penalty, and I remembered how very much I liked Alice Hogland. Most of the family members simply grieved, both inarticulately and articulately. Eventually, FOX news exhausted the grief of family members and moved on to a commentator who gave a rabid diatribe in favor of racial profiling, slurs alls Muslims and Arabs as terrorists, and took a strong stance in favor of stopping illegal immigration along the Mexican border.

Finally, I could stand it no longer. I looked at the television and said (out loud), “Oh. Shut. Up. You ignorant, paranoid, xenophobic, racist bastard!” I got actual applause from two of the men in the waiting room and my mother.

The only thing to read in the waiting room was a catalogue of chemotherapy wigs and post mastectomy wear. I decided reading was not the best strategy.

Finally, at 4:45 I was led into an examination room. The doctor came in, shook my hand, and introduced himself. I told him the names of the fingers on my left hand, and he made notes in my chart. He asked me if I saw a cardiologist for my heart. (I do.) He asked me if I saw a neurologist for my epilepsy. (I do.) He told me to take off my top and he’d be back with his nurse to examine my breast. He emphasized the “with my nurse” in such a way as to warn me that any law suit against him for breast examination would be doomed to failure.

I took off my top, and put on the stupid paper napkin top.

After a few minutes he re-entered the room, nurse in tow, and examined my breast. He asked me to show you to him. I did. First he grabbed hold of you and attempted to squeeze you out of my skin like a pimple. Then he attempted to take you into another room to examine without the hindrance of my presence. When these things failed, he asked me to move my arms about as he poked and prodded my breasts from a variety of angles and with a variety of pressure. I mentioned that there seemed to be two new smaller lumps. He said there were “several” places that needed investigation.

Then, he got up and said, “Once you’re dressed, go straight down the hall, my nurse will set you up.”

When I arrived at the designated rendezvous point in the hallway, the nurse was deep in conversation with another woman while they rapidly flipped the pages of a calendar back and forth while discussing Good Friday and a wedding. Finally, they both seem satisfied, and announced to me that the doctor would perform a biopsy on me on April 28th at 2:00. I said, “I beg your pardon” and they repeated this information. The world tilted on it’s axis as I calculated the almost four weeks that would expire before April 28th

.“Is it okay to wait that long?”

“Certainly.”

“So it’s not a malignancy?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“If it’s a malignancy, it’s okay to wait this long?”

“There is no such thing as emergent breast cancer unless it is outside your skin and bleeding.”

Well, damn. That was reassuring.

I inquired as to what the biopsy will entail. She handed me a sheet of paper and says, “Your instructions are right here.” I looked at the sheet of paper which says “Core Breast Biopsy” in large print, and saw that my instructions answered almost none of my questions.

“Will I be able to drive myself home?”

“Can you drive?”

“Yes.”

“Well then yes, you can drive yourself home.”

“Will I be given anything for the pain.”

“No. You may take Tylenol if it bothers you.”

I could tell right off that this is going to be a warm and fuzzy experience.

I wandered into the waiting room in a state remarkably like shell shock. I told my mother when the biopsy would be and she assumed a state remarkably like shell shock.

We went to a nice restaurant and had lobster bisque and salad. I remember the lobster bisque was too salty.

I came home and posted to the blog. It’s odd, now, in retrospect. I didn’t call a lot of people who knew I was seeing the surgeon that day. But I did post to the blog. The blog had become my lifeline. My real source of support in this storm.

I also called my father, who suggested I come home with my mother and see his surgeon. My mother and I decide to call my cousin who is also a surgeon and get his take on whether waiting this long is a good idea or not.

My cousin, with whom I hadn’t spoken in over 10 years, was remarkably reassuring. He told me that they’ve found that early surgical intervention doesn’t make that much difference in a patient’s prognosis, and that often he tells women whom he knows to have malignancies to wait a few weeks prior to their surgery to get their lives in order. He also answered a lot of my questions, and told me that he found much reason to believe that you are not a malignancy. He said, of course, he couldn’t be sure, but he was very doubtful that you were cancer.

It was finally decided that my mother, who had been traveling back and forth from her sister’s sick bed, her funeral, and my sick bed for 6 weeks, should go home. She was exhausted. She needed to be at home, sleep in her bed, be with her dog.

For the next several weeks, the days moved slowly by and I was in a bubble called waiting. I ate when I remembered to. I read a lot of Jane Austen. I read Pride and Prejudice five times, Persuasions three times, Sense and Sensibility twice, Emma once, and Mansfield Park twice. I watched A&E’s presentation of Pride and Prejudice twice too. And I talked to my new friend in Minnesota on the phone as often as she had energy for me. I talked to my best friend in Phoenix. I asked her if I needed a place to die, if I could come die at her house. She said I could. So did my best friend in Round Rock. I had options. I had places to go to die, or to have chemo and try to live. This was good. I need contingency plans.

I was outside of time, drifting in an endless now.

Once during this period, I got a call from William who said he wanted to come visit me at the end of May. For a brief moment I saw beyond now to a time called “then”, and thought “Yes. Yes. Come see me.”

On the morning of the 28th, I woke just as dawn was breaking and the birds were first singing their soft songs. Before the abbey bells had rung. I rested there for a moment and then thought that the one thing worse than being rushed that day would be having too much time on my hands that day, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Later, the alarm pulled me back into the waking world, and I stumbled for coffee, read the morning news, and cooked breakfast. I burned the toasts, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t taste it anyway. I showered. Fixed my hair. Put on a pair of matching bra & panties, and then wondered what it is one wears to a breast biopsy. I wished their was someone I could ask. I thought about asking my friend in Minnesota, but she was already at work, and I didn’t have her work number. I decided to do makeup before clothes, and I remembered to print out my medical history, complete with drugs and allergies.

My mother called, and I asked her what I should wear. “Your breasts” was her answer. And it made me laugh and I was oh-so-grateful to her for making me laugh.

Finally, I settled on a pant suit which came close to fitting me. Of course, nothing fit me any more, I had wasted away to 95 pounds, but at least this outfit didn’t end up in a puddle around my ankles when I stood up. As I walked out to my car that afternoon, I saw the leaves on all the trees and realized that spring had happened while I was away. I was almost shocked to learn I had been gone so long.

I don’t remember the drive there. I didn’t remember it then. I remembered leaving town, and coming to the next town, and realizing I didn’t remember anything at all in-between. I even checked my car, to make sure it was okay, to reassure myself I hadn’t had a wreck.

I got the waiting room expecting masses of people and FOX news. Gratefully there were neither. I was alone in the waiting room. The television was turned off. I stood at the reception window waiting for someone to show up. Minutes ticked by and I began to panic. I had written down the wrong day, the wrong time… But finally a nurse came, and no, I was expected. She took my medical history from me and smiled and said, “I wish all our patients would do this.” I thought to myself how different she was from the other nurse. I thought to myself how glad I was she was different from the other nurse.

Just as I finished a chapter in my latest perusal of Persuasions, I was called to the examination room. The nurse stepped outside while I put on the paper gown, and then came in to prepare everything for the procedure. I asked her about what would happen, and she gave me a very detailed response. I was really, really, glad she was not the other nurse.

Then the doctor came in. He was more talkative this time. Less disconnected. And he talked me through the procedure, told me everything that was going to happen just before he did it. First their was a bee sting sort of feeling as the general anesthesia was injected into the skin. Then a second, stronger bee sting as the general anesthesia was injected into the breast tissue. Then he got the sonogram machine and found the lump, looked for any other lumps, and found that one of the other lumps had resolved and the second was a cyst and nothing to worry about. Then an instrument that looks like nothing so much as a tiny melon baller in a clear plastic tube appeared, and essentially that’s what it does. It went into you., scoops up a ball of flesh, and extracts it for examination. All told, the doctor took about 7 balls of flesh from you, tiny, tiny balls. Smaller than bee-bees, but large enough to be visible to the naked eye. It did not particularly hurt, but it did feel odd, to you feel my breast being rearranged inside itself. The phrase “pierced your breast” appeared in your mind, and hung there poetically.
And then it was over.

On the drive home, I thought about William coming at the end of May. I thought if the news was bad, I would call him and ask him to come sooner, or I wouldn’t let them do anything to me until he could come first. I wanted to dance one last time while I still had the breath and the energy to dance. I wanted to make love one last time while I still had both my breasts, whole and largely unmarked, and while I still had my long blonde hair to frame my face. And I wanted, violently, to do these things with William. With the first man I had ever loved. With a man who had loved me through it all. With someone I trusted and knew the measure of. I wanted to lose the last vestige of my youth with the man who had known my youth most intimately. I cried a little bit as I thought of these things.

I was told I’d get the results on Wednesday, so I braced myself for not getting them until Friday. They came on Thursday. Thursday afternoon they called and told me you were benign. Life began again. Time began again. The specter of death receded from my doorstep.

I still have you with me. I may always have you with me. In my left breast. Close to my heart.