I found a lump in my breast

I was reading an article in a woman’s magazine about a famous actress who had had a stroke and was now confined to a wheelchair. She is in her nineties now and the photo of her almost looked like a caricature of her former self. She was once a beautiful woman and famous for her love of wealth and many husbands. I was stunned to think that this old, frail lady was the same as the mink coated, diamond adorned, sex goddess that I remembered. “God, I’d hate to be that old,” I thought to myself.

As soon as I recognized that thought I scolded myself, first for being so judgemental and superficial but more so, because I realized I had just made a statement to myself that I did not wish to be old. Now, how’s that for irony? I was sitting in a breast cancer clinic nervously awaiting biopsy results. I corrected myself, I do want to be old, not decrepit and semi-decomposed, but certainly older than what I am now – much older. I wondered how often I had had such thoughts. I never wanted to be forty when I was younger than that, but being forty turned out to be fabulous and really young when I got there. I moved the measuring stick and thought I’d hate to be fifty until I got there and found that that was pretty young as well. I think I have thought that all ages more than ten years more than my present age were old ages. Mum is seventy seven this year and she tells me she feels the same as she did when she was thirty.

Death and aging have been showing up quite a lot in the last year or two. It seems like every few weeks I am hearing about someone dying. Is that just how it goes around the age of fifty or has it been a kind of premonition that I was about to look down the barrel of my own possibility. Have I been warned to check my own expiry date and encouraged to stop burning time.

Michelle and I have been talking a lot lately about youthing. What is the possibility of speaking to your DNA and reversing aging? There are many who claim it is possible. Diet and some yoga techniques claim to reverse aging, but mostly, we have been using the mind to instruct the body to rejuvenate itself. Our experiment has looked pretty good really and I was certain we were on to something. I feel wonderful; healthier, stronger, more flexible and more vital than I have felt in years.

Mind over matter – law of attraction – manifesting desires – creating our own realities. I absolutely know that the mind can heal the body. Hey, I have done so many times, and even written a book about it. So, how the hell do I end up in a breast cancer clinic with a lump under my arm calling itself ‘trouble’. Well, I think I have just recognized one request I have been subconsciously making and that is, I have been telling myself that I don’t want to be old! I really must change that instruction! My enthusiasm for youthing has been misunderstood. I do want to get old. Gosh, sometimes you have to be so careful what you wish for.

“Uncreate that thought – I now give gratitude for my healthy, vibrate, perfectly balanced body. I love myself, I love my body and I love my life”.

“I now create a long and healthy life for myself. I desire more fun, vitality, creativity and greater purpose. I am secure, supported, assisted and protected”.

A few years ago my friend B applied to a TV show to have a total body make over. She said at the time that she hated her large breasts, hated having to wear heavy duty bras, and hated her large thighs and bum. When filling in the application form, she stated that she would love to have her breasts reduced and liposuction on her thighs and bum. She wasn’t selected for the show, but last year she had a double mastectomy to remove breast cancer. This year she is having breast reconstruction and they are taking fat from her thighs to fill the breasts. She said to me, “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, and it sometimes it doesn’t come the way you expected.”

(Why do I keep having to relearn what I already know?)

I have written so much about body image and the need to love, respect, nurture and care for our bodies. Just how insidiously are we conditioned to criticize and compare our bodies? When will we as women get it? Is it really just a co-incidence that around 1 in 8 western women get breast cancer? Or, is it really about the breast being the feminine zone. Beauty, sexuality, female power, youth and desirability – are we turning our fears and insecurities back on ourselves, targeting the icons of femaleness – our breasts. Do men do the same with the prostate? Statistics seem to suggest that breast and prostate cancers have become epidemic; second only to heart attack – now isn’t that saying something. And just what would sexuality and the heart have in common? Well let’s think about love…or lack of love …or inability to love…or feeling unlovable…

I’ll come back to that a little later, but right now, I am sitting here with one of my favourite insights, “Bad things happen for good reasons”. When I first discovered the lump under my arm I told myself a number of stories about what it probably was. I deliberately avoided thinking about the C word even knowing it was obviously the first thing I did think of. If C isn’t diagnosed and stated then C does not exist. Little voice inside the head says, ‘wait and see if it goes away’. Two weeks later little voice speaks louder and insists on checking it out, just to put my mind at rest. I scramble around my brain for some filed info about most lumps being cysts and most of the ones that aren’t cysts are benign anyway. Snippets of facts float up and I reassure myself that there is no family history of breast cancer, no long term contraceptive pill use, no nipple discharge or textured bumpy skin. I started and finished menstruation at appropriate ages and had my child when I was 19. Ah, I console myself, “Most unlikely – probably impossible. So, go check it out just to prove yourself right.”

‘It’s not a cyst.” Ultrasound lady says. What does that mean? Funny how they know what it isn’t, but are unable to say what it is. “Well, you will need to speak with your Doctor and he will probably want you to have a biopsy”. That can’t be good. I study her posture, tone of her voice, facial expression – nothing. But she’s just a little too thorough and a little too professional. I feel the air in the room sigh and hum Mmmmmm….

“It’s not a cyst” the doctor reiterates. I know that, so what exactly is it?
(Linda says it could just be my undeveloped twin when I tell her. It seemed hysterically funny at the time. The thought of having my armpit aborted seemed so much easier to handle.)
He’s not saying what it is- no-one wants to actually say it, so they shuffle me off to someone else.

“When did you have your last mammogram?” Is she being too nice, too gentle, and too patient? Why isn’t she lecturing me when I tell her it was fifteen years ago. No, she knows something already. The mammogram goes quite well; they have improved a lot since my last one, there is a little pressure, but nowhere near the salami thin press of my last one. Thank God for that as she ended up doing 9 mammograms. The lump is in a difficult place at the outer edge of my breast so I have to go sideways and upside-down and I think inside out – maybe not quite inside-out-up-side-down but that’s how I remember it.

She kept leaving the room and coming back and saying they need to redo them and recheck something. It dawns on me that she is redoing the left breast but the lump is on the right. She says something about little calcium deposits that need to be checked. Well who cares about calcium space junk when I have a lump on the other side? Something about indication of pre-cancerous cells. Oh shit, why go looking for trouble. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. Let’s deal with what is, and not was could be, might be, and probably wont be. Any anyway, what is pre-cancerous – a few cells that say don’t know if they will or they wont be cancer. Leave them alone!

The next day I am across town, half naked, and watching a TV screen with a movie of, “The Lump”. The procedure is fascinating and easy peasy; a very thin needle which stings no more than a mossie bite. The Dr is being guided by the ultrasound image and pushes what looks like a crochet hook into the lump and extracts a few cells. This is surprisingly painless and they should have said so, as I expected it to be more traumatic. The samples were sent to pathology to determine if C was living in my lump.

My little pea sized lump with big consequences and life altering implications. A little pea filled with teeny, weeny angry cells - minute specks of almost nothing, with the potential to eat me up until I cease to exist.

The surgeon is young and beautiful and quietly spoken. “It is Cancer,” he states clearly, softly and matter-of-factly. No dim lights, soft music, hand holding or sad regret. Done! It’s in the bag, it now exists.

I want to say Bugga but I settle for Oh. What can I say, I really don’t know what it all means, and yet I am aware that many meanings come to mind. When I first found the lump I hoped it wasn’t a lump-lump. Then when it was a lump I hoped that it was a benign lump. Then I hoped it would only be a lumpectomy and not a mastectomy. I guess if it becomes a mastectomy, I will hope that it won’t be chemotherapy and radiation and baldness and sickness. I know that for many, many woman that the basketful of hopes runs out until the last one left is, “I hope this doesn’t kill me”.

I am so sorry for all of the women who go the entire journey. I really understand the process of wishes, prayers and promises. I feel self-centred and somehow ashamed to realize that I also detach myself from them and see myself as something more special or someone more deserving. I justify my right to live, and I fossick around my mind for some proof of that. I pull up “I am a good person,” like that’s the real measure of life and death or perhaps just the worthiness of good luck and blessings.

I find myself making statements or initiating contracts with…The One Who Chooses such bargains. I then correct this disrespectful comment and think, say God, if God exists and you think he has the power to protect you, then you better use his correct name and respectfully so.

The surgeon does another biopsy. This one is called a core biopsy and he takes some tissue from the breast, “To be more thorough.” He refers me back to have another biopsy using mammograms for the calcium space junk, to be even surer. He books a day for a lumpectomy in a few weeks time. He wants to take 4 lymph nodes out and says something about putting dye into the lump and tracking which lymph nodes it travels through. This will check for cancer cells in the nodes and will indicate weather the C has travelled to other places in my body. He talks about radiation therapy and a mastectomy if the left breast calcium has pre cancerous cells. I no longer listen – mastectomy is not an option. I have a lump – it’s ugly – let’s take it away- that’s it.

At the breast clinic I had to lie on my stomach on a table with a large hole in the centre. My left breast hung down the hole and the rim of the hole pushed uncomfortably into my ribs and solar plexus. I was told not to move during the procedure. My breast was then clamped tightly into a vice and another mammogram was taken. I waited to be released. I could hear the radiographer talking at a distance and thought she had wandered off and forgotten me. I called out that she had not released me from the vice. She sternly barked that I was not to move. She was checking, measuring and recording the location of the calcium specks on her images. She took a number of images and my body ached from having to remain in position.

There was music playing and it was an Anne Murray CD. Sad love ballads played as I tried to remove myself mentally from this reality. I kept remaining myself that these people and these procedures where here to help me. I tried to be grateful. I tried to meditate. I slipped in and out of my happy place. Think of love, and think of light, and think of healing energy flowing through your body, I told myself with some success. Anne Murray continued:

I cried a tear, you wiped it dry
I was confused, you cleared my mind
I sold my soul, you bought it back for me
And held me up and gave me dignity
Somehow you needed me

You gave me strength to stand alone again
To face the world out on my own again
You put me high upon a pedestal
So high that I could almost see eternity
You needed me, you needed me

And I can't believe it's you
I can't believe it's true
I needed you and you were there
And I'll never leave, why should I leave? I'd be a fool
'cause I finally found someone who really cares

You held my hand when it was cold
When I was lost you took me home
You gave me hope when I was at the end
And turned my lies back into truth again
You even called me "friend"

You gave me strength to stand alone again
To face the world out on my own again
You put me high upon a pedestal
So high that I could almost see eternity
You needed me, you needed me

I couldn’t help but think of Rick, I tried desperately not too, as I knew I would fall apart if I allowed myself to miss him or wish he was here. But the words in the song just pulled up his image and the memory of not so long ago when he massaged my back. I so desperately needed my back to be massaged now. Rick has a bedroom voice, very different to his strong, masculine daytime voice. His bedroom voice is soft and gentle and nurturing. We would lie in the dark of night and he would speak with this voice and I would see his words like movies behind my closed eyes.

I used his image and heard him speaking softly, telling me to relax, and I felt his hands massaging my back and shoulders. He kept saying over and over, “Son, you are going to be alright”. All the while this woman with her stern voice insisting I don’t move as she hit me with what sounded or felt like a potatoe gun punching out samples of my flesh. I wept silently while Rick massaged me and Anne Murray continued singing. (I think this took around 45 minutes.)

When it was over, I was given my new life diary of appointments. Go here, bring that, check with, confirm with, read this, sign that. The adventure continues and it is like a treasure hunt, each task and each day reveals the next. I am travelling on an escalator to nowhere known. I can only measure time as a present moment. All invitations and goals and things to do are answered with probably, but I’m not sure. I can only deal with how and where I am right this minute. I affirm over and over, “here is good”.

The past few weeks have been challenging. I find myself being the observer more often than the participant. It’s interesting to see where the mind goes and it’s more interesting to observe the control I have over it. In a strange twist I find I am even happier and more aware than usual. I think the surgeon thinks I’m odd or maybe he thinks I am in denial – perhaps I am.

I really don’t think I will die from this. I can’t afford to think that and wouldn’t think it even if I was told it was likely. I am pleased to see that my beliefs are solid and I am playing with the idea of dying while at the same time insisting that it is not for me at this time.

I haven’t told many people about this. I won’t tell my son until it is all over. If it was to turn tragic then I wouldn’t want him to have it in his head for even 1 second longer than necessary. I have told my mother I have a lump that needs to be removed. She thinks it is a cyst and that’s how I will leave it. She worries about things and I do not want her to worry, for her own sake, but also I don’t want that energy near me. I pick up peoples thoughts and feelings and fear is my greatest enemy right now.

Other people’s thoughts, feelings and words can heal or harm me, so I have been very selective about whom I have shared this with. I have a fabulous team – my tribe – my healers –my light workers.

What will heal me is keeping my energy up. Serenity, joyfulness and gratitude are my medicine. Deep breathing and lots of fruit, vegetables, nuts and water are life enhancing considerations. Having long term goals and expectations are important. Visualizing and affirming the future creates the future. Loving people, especially me loving myself and my life, and being open and accepting and receptive to love will turn this around in no time. I am actually quite grateful for this experience as I want to show that it is possible to heal ourselves. Talk is cheap and many profess to know it all. If I can walk the walk for others and come back and say here is a way for you to heal yourself too, then what a blessing this will be.

In my next entry I will discuss the influence of my team, the healing power of friendship and support, and explore the emotional reactions and mind-games of this adventure.