It’s my story, I’ll tell it my way, and yeah, it’s been as scary as sweet Fanny fuck all. I’m telling it all after the fact cause I’m terrified, but trying very hard to hold it together and do what needs doing.
6/23- Sunday Night aka Houston, I Have a Problem– Found a suspicious bit in one of my dirtypillows as I was trying to fall asleep. Bye sleep! Lay awake twitching out, knowing there wasn’t shit I could do at 2am or 3am or 4am that would be helpful. Flip between ‘I didn’t really feel anything unusual’ and ‘omfg they are gonna slice off the girls’ to ‘and so what? Not like I haven’t done reconstructive surgery before.. and instead of having them tat on nipples, I’ll get little curled purple dragons and wig out poor Rick for the rest of his life’.
6/24- Monday Morning aka Denial, Not Just a River in Egypt– thank you, work day, for keeping me from running screaming into traffic. Focused until the meetings were done, somehow.
6/24- Monday Afternoon aka Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me?– OK, work day is done, time to let my fingers do the walking and get a professional to fluff the dirtypillows.
First stop, insurance company du jour. Wonderful, empathetic phone agent tells me everything I need to know, gives me a number to call and schedule a mammothography thinger. My first, clearly, or I wouldn’t have started with my insurance company.
Second stop, random radiology place in which I endure three transfers and fifteen minutes on hold before being told I’m not allowed to schedule my own mammothography thinger, I have to have a referral from a Doctor, it’s like a prescription, and it doesn’t matter what my insurance agent told me to do. Said with all the empathy of someone telling me no, I can’t have a Whopper without pickles, wtf was I thinking? They schedule me to shut me up, then refer me to their Doctor of Choice. Bree comes and lays her head on my knee.
Third stop, Doctor of Choice. More time on hold, only to be told I have fucked up AGAIN in the ‘are you mentally deficient’ voice by scheduling the mammothgraphy thinger with the wrong clinic. And they’ll need to call me back about any kind of booking. (At time of writing, it’s been over an hour, no callback.) Bree crawls onto my footstool and then into my lap.
Fourth stop, in which I shake my fist at the Powers That Be and schedule an appointment with Planned Parenthood. They don’t take my insurance, but I don’t even remotely care at this point… they were willing to give me an appointment to honk the tatas and give me the Almighty Referral. I figure if Doctor of Choice calls me back and is somehow willing to bend all the rules and work with the radiology clinic that my insurance is willing to pay for in the timeframe I’ve got, I can always cancel the spare honking appointment.
And this is where I’m writing from right now- every single person I talked to, including my insurance company, was female. Only the insurance agent had anything remotely like empathy for my situation and the fact that while I’m doing my best to keep it together, I’m freaking the everliving mcfuck out. Now, I get that we’re talking about office staff that see way scarier shit than what I’m going through every single day of their lives.
But every one of those flaming bitches didn’t even act like they wanted to help me. They just told me how I was doing it all wrong with little to no attempt to get me on the ‘right’ path.
Why is this so hard? Don’t we hear a thousand times that early detection is the key to survival? What the fiery fuck is wrong with these cows?
6/25- Tuesday Midday- So this is how we play the waiting game– I took a perverse pleasure in cancelling the original (apparently very very wrong) thinger appointment, as well as politely telling the individual who finally called back from Doctor of Choice’s office that they really should have been in touch yesterday and I will not be seeking out their services. Later, when this is all over, I’ll post a frank review on their site, in hopes that someone actually running the joint will see how their office staff behaves.
I’m always pretty much coping if there’s something that needs doing. Now appointment is set, and I realize I am Schrodinger’s Bitch. I am suspended in time and space and both perfectly healthy and… not. I remind myself 5000 times a minute that there is absolutely no history of breast cancer in my family on either side. That this could be the opportunity to be the hottest 110 year old in the nursing home with my dragon tatt’d tatas which will be flashed to people randomly and frequently.
All these thoughts are me holding hyperventilation at bay, like my panic is a lion and I’m fending it off with a whip and a chair. I am Schrodinger’s Bitch, and this is how they cope.
6/25- Tuesday Evening- You’re not funny, but I’m laughing–
I haven’t said much so far in this little diary about how great Rick has been.
He’s honestly been great. We’ve been together long enough that he gets me, and he knows what I need and knows when to cuddle and just to let me go be a little Schrodinger’s Bitchly about things.
So when he came in and sheepishly asked if I’d found the problem on the left or right side, I was a little confused.
“Right side. Why?”
Rick ducked his head for a minute, like he was hemming and hawing over whether to keep talking or not. But of course, it’s Rick, so he keeps talking until I’m horror laughing. “Well, you know, if it has to be cut off, you don’t have to replace it. You could just like get a bow to carry around and say you’re an Amazon now.”
We’re sick people. I laughed.
6/26- Wednesday evening- You’re still not funny, but I’m still laughing
Rick (from the depths of his shower)- Hey, there’s a problem with the Amazon thing.
Me- What’s that?
Rick- People are going to constantly say, aren’t you a little short to be an Amazon? It’ll be the classic line all. the. time.
7/1- Monday- But what about the DOG?!
In one long think night of not sleeping real well, the thought that hit me the hardest was my pup.
Bree is my girl, always has been- and she doesn’t understand when mama is gone for more than three or four hours.
How the hell was Bree going to understand if mama had to be gone for days and came back not really up to playing? Or, you know, period?
It’s one thing to accept a situation when you know the whys and wheres. It’s another when someone you love has no way of coming to understanding, they just know the situation changed.
I explained this to Rick, who, thankfully, can take it in the same spirit in which he dishes it out. “Yes, Bree would have issues.”
7/3- Wednesday- The palpating
This is where I have to honestly sing the praises of Planned Parenthood. I’d never been in one before, I just had them cataloged somewhere in my head as being an approved of nebulous Good Thing, kind of in the same section as other Good Things I don’t utilize but probably should, like libraries and senior centers.
I’m struggling with how to put this down in a way that doesn’t stray into smug or patronizing, so if you sense that, please discount it. The reality is, these people are doing a great thing and impacting every person that walks through those doors for the better. I received the best medical care I’ve ever known, precisely as I needed it- impersonal but kind, to the point, and blessedly swift. If you’ve never needed their services, I’m glad for you, and I hope you’ll consider donating. If you’ve used their services, then you know, and I hope you’ll consider donating. I know I will, today, and for the rest of my life- because I don’t forget the people that were there when I truly needed them to help me navigate a system I have no handle on- and I want that care to be there for anyone who needs it. Being afraid of your own body is terrifying, and no one should have to live with that as a given.
At all times, I felt safe, protected, and cared for.. and let’s face it, vulnerable is kind of my go to mode in a situation like this one. I had a super early appointment, in my purple hair and acid wash jeans and star wars t shirt, and answered a lot of questions I hadn’t even thought of in years. My examination was over in minutes, and I had the referral that I need for my next stop along with the words I needed in a million billion ways to hear- probably not cancer.
I still have an appointment or two to go, cause ‘probably’ needs to be more like ‘definitely’, but yeah, a huge potentially cancerous weight has been lifted off me. There’s air in the room. And, most of all, if you’re reading this and afraid of your own breasts, you can do this. Go get checked out, make decisions with all the information on the table. Don’t let fear rob you of time, in case it is something that needs treatment.
In a lot of ways, I wasn’t shown how to cope with fear in a good way. I was told that I was too smart to be afraid of the things I was afraid of. Well, this was one time that little mantra didn’t work so well, and I had to take a long, deep soak in a tub of fear.
And you know? It didn’t kill me. I lost some sleep, I found out (not that I didn’t know, but knowing in the mind and knowing in the heart are two different things) that I am surrounded by people who support me and care about me even when things aren’t looking great. I don’t have to deal with fear alone, thinking less of myself, thinking that admitting to it is some kind of flaw.
So, that’s it for now… I hope you horror laughed a few times as we went through here, and that maybe, have a think.
As for me, I’m going to coin flip between packing for our trip to Dragon Thrones and getting a much needed nap.
Curiouser and Curiouser 