On the phone with my eldest daughter, I do the thing mothers do to their eldest daughters: I list all of the things stressing me out.
“… mostly money, exhaustion, Bea’s high school, this is probably the month I find a lump.” I say this as I reach down and touch my left breast. I feel it.
“Whoa. There’s a lump.”
It’s there.
“No.”
“Wait, yeah. For real.”
My paternal aunt had breast cancer; she’s the only other woman in my family with breasts smaller than a DD. Do we have the same breasts? Only diagnostics will tell.
Part of me believes this is just going to end up like the first–and only–time I had a lump in my breast. At age thirteen, I went to the doctor for a lump. He told me it was actually breast tissue and my cancer was going to grow into a breast. Best day of my life, honestly. Part of me believes maybe I do have boobs from the other side of the family, and maybe they too will turn into HHHs by the age of seventy? Maybe the lump I’ve found is my breast growing again. I’m sure it is.
“The lump is at one o’clock, I guess,” I tell the UCLA Health operator on the phone. I can hear him clicking away.
“Our next available appointment is in March at the location in your city, but I have an opening on November 30th at 7:30 a.m. in Westwood.”
My mind races with the math. It is currently September 15th. I have to walk around with this huge lump until November 30th? Should I just fly to Canada? Canada’s health care is even faster than that.
A good friend offers to loan me the money to pay for a private doctor and then another friend offers, and I take the loan. I am now going to pay a doctor, who doesn’t take insurance, $1500 for a physical and a referral for a mammogram, ensuring that I’ll get the scan on September 27th. Privilege is real.
On top of that, I had a seizure.
Hours after finding the lump in my breast, I was walking into my house, when I got a head rush and passed out. As I was falling, I started to convulse.
Not fun, not pretty, not cute, not chill.
It’s the fourth seizure I’ve experienced in the last three years. I do not have a relative that this happens to.
My neurologist's suggestion is to stop and squat whenever I feel them coming on. It usually works. I didn’t have enough of a chance to squat this time. I just fell. There’s nothing I can do to prevent them. No scan that will give me an answer. I guess all I can do is hope that doesn’t happen to me again.
I found a lump. I’m sure it’s a cyst. My friends tell me it’s a cyst, and I believe the odds are in favor of a cyst. So, I guess, most importantly, I have good friends who take care of me when I need it. I don’t need any further diagnostics to see that.
Thank you for writing this. I too have a lump and am waiting and waiting for an appointment. It’s the waiting that is hard. 💛
i had a very painful boob lump which ended up being benign but still oww. my gyn recommended taking vitamin e supplements to ease the pain so i did and it worked. it also made my naturally low blood pressure drop wayyy too low and i was having frequent vertigo, passing out and losing feeling in my extremities. took me a few weeks of those symptoms to connect to the vitamin e. i had the same issue with collagen supplements. bodies are weird. good luck. 🤞