Sagittarius
I first discovered The Lump when I was about 18 years old. It was in my left breast, over my heart. I'd recently been through a tumultuous adolescence, and so, still shaken, I was convinced I had cancer. I knew I was technically too young to have breast cancer, but the trauma of my teen years convinced me that I was one of the unlucky ones.
I went to the doctor. She had trouble detecting it with her hand and said it was likely just fibrous breast tissue, which is normal. Unconvinced, I located it with my fingers and guided her fingers to it. It was her turn to be unconvinced. She said it felt fine, so of course I moved on to other anxieties. From that point on, every time I was stressed, I'd feel a pinching pain over my heart in my left breast, which I attributed to paranoia.
A few years later, I left behind the suburbs of my adolescence and took up a less turbulent path on the West Coast of Canada. The lump caught up to me somewhere around Day 28. Due Day. D-Day. It hadn't come yet, so as I made my way to the coffee pot, thinking about the prospects of my potentially-late period, I decided to make a doctor appointment to try to wangle some free birth control.
At my appointment, I was told I'd have no such luck with the free sample; they were all out of my kind of synthetic hormones. Since it was my first doctor appointment in my new province, the physician wanted to take some of my health history down for her file.
"When is your period due?" she asked.
"Today," I said.
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Comments
canada or taiwan.. i feel
By li ru fong, July 7, 2007 at 04:30canada or taiwan..
i feel alot of sympathy for when women
head to a doctor.. GP or gynecologist.
health, THE most important issue and i'd
also like to agree with the above poster
that health professionals could all use a dose of professionalism in treatment of those seeking help.
another decent article from Heather.
thank u for sharing your personal story.
You are very brave! Thanks
By faeriedragon, June 14, 2007 at 00:52You are very brave! Thanks for sharing your story. I hope by now you have good news...!
Hey Heather, i feel a bit
By luyen, June 15, 2007 at 10:13Hey Heather, i feel a bit awkward talking about this, but i think it's an important issue too. My wife went and go a lump in her breast checked a few weeks ago, in fact i constantly nag her to do self-examination and get a mammogram.
More so the former, because i read somewhere that mammograms are only 60-70% accurate, anyhow, not 100% accurate. Like in your story, you have a human person interpreting the results, and without much compassion.
I find the health system overloaded, it's more like a factory for services such x-rays, and ultrasounds, in and out, next! It's really too bad, because my wife said the same things you did... that most of the medical people she came across were quite off-standish, almost uncaring, maybe they're burned out...i don't know.
I honestly think medical workers would benefit from training in compassion, I think that would help them deal better with the stress and things they go through and see.
I have a lump that's been
By Trina Ricketts, June 11, 2007 at 15:01I have a lump that's been there for years and no doctor has ever made a fuss about it, so I'm very interested to hear how things turn out for you. *hugs*
Well, no news is good
By Heather Wallace, June 11, 2007 at 16:41Well, no news is good news...never did get a call. I guess I should be proactive and call my doctor to see if they have any results, but our health care system tends to leave you in the dark if all was well, so I feel pretty confident I weathered the storm. Thanks!!