chicory-flavored world

I have called and made the appointment, the one I needed to make because of the lump I found in my breast. It’s a not-small lump, and it is uncomfortable, painful even (my friend Catalina says her mother always says ‘cancer doesn’t hurt’). I am conscious of it often, but I am not sure if that is because it hurts or because I am just hyper-aware.

There is a very special “thud” of silence that occurs when you tell them that you need to come in to see the doctor and that it is a lump in your breast. A sound like a curtain falling, like a door closing ever so softly. Her voice, the voice of the woman on the other end, it changes. Something becomes brisk and overly-businesslike, a purposeful avoidance of emotion. She can’t get me in “tomorrow” but she’ll get me in “Monday”.

I hadn’t expected to get an appointment for a few weeks.

But now, here I am, talking to someone brisk and businesslike who has gotten me an appointment as soon as she could. And in that moment, something inside me shifts. Something imperceptibly shifts, and I begin to wonder if this is one of “those” moments, the ones where you feel something rip across the fabric of your life, parting it forever into your life “before” and your life “after”. My mind flits to the day my cousin Jim died, how I ran to his parents’ house and stood in my slippers while his wife called to tell them, stood there so they wouldn’t be alone as they smiled in their happiness to see me. Because, you know, they didn’t know yet. The phone rang, and I wanted more than I had ever wanted anything to stop them from answering it. To keep them there, in the “before”, just a little longer.

I start to mention it to a few people, even though I’m “sure it’s nothing”. I mean, it’s true—cancer, at least, breast cancer, it really doesn’t hurt the vast majority of the time. So it’s probably just a cyst.

Probably. Such a small word to hang everything you are, everything you were, everything you want to be onto. There are two, count ‘em, two stupid b’s, and that y at the end? Stupid y. I’m not a graceful person, and if I slide off there is no way in hell I could grab onto the little swirl at the end of that y and hold on to keep from falling.

My friend Angela says she’s glad I made the appointment, to let her know how it goes. My friend Catalina gets an unintentionally-serious face and asks if my family has a history of breast cancer (yes…well, just my grandmother though…) and if it was on my mother’s side (yes, my maternal grandmother…but then, she had six daughters and none of them have had it…yet). She asks me to let her know how it goes, too. My friend Joanna tells me about a friend of hers who went through the same thing and was terrified (No, of course you shouldn’t be terrified! That’s not what I meant!), but, of course, everything turned out fine.

My husband is endlessly cheerful, impossibly optimistic. I’m not sure if he really doesn’t feel concerned or if he’s afraid to scare me.

I read a message on a local parents’ listserv, titled “Vacation rental in NH/Maine beach areas”. It’s someone whose friend is gravely ill, who wants to help her find a vacation rental so she can spend some time with her family (The “before she dies” part goes unsaid, but I feel it there, pressing.) I try not to tear up at it, but of course I do. I always do, anyway.

It’s the same breast I had the recurring bouts of mastitis in, the same one that my daughter flat-out refused to nurse on when she was around 8 months old. Is that the problem? Some nursing-related problem, still? All these months later? A random blocked duct? A cyst in the way of things?

I wonder when I will have the mammogram, how much it will hurt. My breasts are stupid-big; I was wearing C-cups before most girls had even moved to training bras. I press one as flat as I can between my hands and it’s still several inches thick. This is going to hurt.

But that’s good, right? Because cancer doesn’t hurt.