No other phrase strikes so much fear into the hearts of American women, except maybe, all sales final.
My annual mammogram was coming up and I began sweating it early like the serious hypochondriac I am.
It is 1985 and Jane and I were in Des Moines facing another round of governmental training. We were eating at a tex-mex place and the hostess had a strange harness attached to her arm and I am staring at it. "That woman had a mastectomy," Jane said. And then I am telling her about the discharge I had from my left nipple.
There was blood in that discharge smeared across the microscopic slide and I am being trundled into surgery. Afterwards my surgeon looms above me, Butterfinger candy bar fragments around his mouth. I turn and see my mother, my aunt Leona, I have no husband at this time. Am I all right? They nod yes, gratified.
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Twice more in the next few years I am on that gurney. One lump I discovered myself and the other found on a routine mammogram, grains of sand scattered in the tissue, a change, cause for concern.
I am lucky. All three biopsies were benign, intraductral papilloma, pre-cancer cells caught early.
I'm not ready to die yet. And I know my control of this situation is tenuous and not totally up to me. I exercise and eat broccoli and I put away those cigarettes a long time ago, god, I miss them. I want to see my grandchildren grown, hold their babies and chuckle with Susan about our bad boy days. So I go in for those annual mammograms even though they scare the bejezus out of me. There is cancer in my family and I'm going to take our twenty-first century technology and kick it in the balls. Women, get your mamms grammed and Carrie, this means you.
My annual mammogram was coming up and I began sweating it early like the serious hypochondriac I am.
It is 1985 and Jane and I were in Des Moines facing another round of governmental training. We were eating at a tex-mex place and the hostess had a strange harness attached to her arm and I am staring at it. "That woman had a mastectomy," Jane said. And then I am telling her about the discharge I had from my left nipple.
There was blood in that discharge smeared across the microscopic slide and I am being trundled into surgery. Afterwards my surgeon looms above me, Butterfinger candy bar fragments around his mouth. I turn and see my mother, my aunt Leona, I have no husband at this time. Am I all right? They nod yes, gratified.
I am lucky. All three biopsies were benign, intraductral papilloma, pre-cancer cells caught early.
I'm not ready to die yet. And I know my control of this situation is tenuous and not totally up to me. I exercise and eat broccoli and I put away those cigarettes a long time ago, god, I miss them. I want to see my grandchildren grown, hold their babies and chuckle with Susan about our bad boy days. So I go in for those annual mammograms even though they scare the bejezus out of me. There is cancer in my family and I'm going to take our twenty-first century technology and kick it in the balls. Women, get your mamms grammed and Carrie, this means you.
1 comment:
Good Grief!!!! Dawn you have resorted to soft porn and boobie pictures on your blog to increase readership.......
Just kidding well said and so true. As much as I hate to do it now I am in for regular check ups on all the associated men problems we guys have at my age. Don't like it a bit. But I wanna live.
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