continued "Breast Cancer book "
This Bra Doesn't Fit and I Don't Have to Wear It !
excerpt:
This is my story and a collection of anecdotes of spiritual warriors, offering glimpses into how we go about finding the silver lining to light our way.
“What size implants do you want, Mrs. Maddocks ?”
“I don’t really care, just make them so that I never have to wear a bra again!”
Like most awakenings, the spiritual blessing part may take awhile to recognize. If you happen to be reading this because you are walking a similar path, please remember that each experience is unique; like ocean waves, none are the same. As I collected these glimpses, I was congratulated on offering an account of what you might expect as you go through the machinations and ruminations that accompany your journey. But alas, I can only tell you what happened to me and what the protocol was at the time of my episode. Take from it what feels right to you and discard the rest like salt thrown over your shoulder after you’ve spilled a little along with your tears. Let them flow, dear reader, then put a dazzling smile on your face, filled with gratitude for a new awakening and faith that your experience has purpose and it’s your purpose and maybe that’s enough.
At this writing, May of 2008, it’s been 19 years, almost to the day, since I found my lump. I was sitting with my sister outside the intensive care unit at the hospital I was born in, located in the southwestern corner of Ohio, as my father was about to lose his 19+ year battle with lymphoma. He’d done pretty well all these years. A perpetual guinea pig for chemotherapy, they wrote him up in a book of records for how much chemistry a human being can withstand. He opted for the very last trick they had up their white sterilized sleeves, but this time, we knew, was the “big one”... he wasn’t going to pull out of it this time.
Hugging myself, arms across my chest, I felt a slight protrusion on the outside of my right breast. I wished I hadn’t mentioned it to my sister, now she’d bug me about it and I was sure it was just a cyst from all the caffeine I drank. I ended up promising to have it tested when all of this was over.
Three months later, living in Maine, far enough away from my sister in Ohio, I tried to just ignore the apricot-sized growth that wouldn’t go away. My friend, who was an acupuncturist on Mt. Desert Island where I practiced massage therapy, was having breast soreness and did not want to go to a doctor either. We made a deal--”I’ll go if you go”. I went first.
Damn. They want to check it out further. They’ve never quite seen a mammogram like this. Well, that may be good. They’ve seen a lot of malignancies--so maybe this is some kind of anomaly--a tissue that I’ve grown, strange but benign, I prayed.
Family and friends rallied to assure me that I’m so healthy, there’s no way. Being a vegetarian for nearly 20 years and managing a health food store had kept me sharply aware of how to eat right and I was proud of how vital and energetic I usually felt. But my husband who seems to have a sense about such things, wouldn’t comment which froze me with fear; I was afraid to ask him out-loud. Everyone said that the biopsy was not a biggie but I was glad to have a general anesthesia, all the same.
Damn, damn, damn. A biopsy gone awry. It’s malignant.
It can’t be. I don’t feel malignant. I feel great!
How can I not know? Am I just breast-deep in denial? Somewhere deep inside me, I had faltered--shouldn’t I know? Shouldn’t I feel the spoiler, eating its way into my happy life?
I felt betrayed by my body, not an altogether new feeling for me--Polio marked my life when I was 2 years old. I had to learn to walk again using braces and a walker. I was the Champion Paper poster child at age 2, during the last wave of the epidemic in 1953. My mother had a premonition that I’d come down with it and the doctor laughed at her when she presented me with cold-like symptoms. “Take your daughter home, Mrs. Smith--you’re just being an overly cautious first-time mother. Take her home and she’ll be fine.” Days later, I woke up paralyzed from my neck down. I’m glad I can’t remember that feeling but wonder if my phobia for constraint and things that fit tightly might be related. My earliest memory is of my grandfather standing at the end of the hospital bed with a Snickers bar that he sneaked in for me. After a week or so, my parents decided that I wasn’t receiving proper care and they scooped me up, taking me home to care for me themselves. That was my introduction to alternative medicine and self-care. A little while later, my father came down with Polio too. He didn’t have paralysis but had the high-fever version that tended to kill its victims. My mother had to drop out of college to work and we moved in with my dad’s parents so that my grandmother could care for us. She stuck a nipple on a pop bottle filled with milk and left me in a playpen while she did her farm work. Was that the beginning of my long-term eating disorder? But then that’s a longer story for another time. Daddy got better and I was left with legs and feet that don’t match. I remember taking off my braces and putting them in my desk at school, thinking that I was getting away with something. Now that I know so much about muscles, I’m glad I followed that instinct. Otherwise, I might not have developed the strength that I now enjoy, physically and mentally which I believe are two expressions of the same thing.
It throws you for a loop when you feel out of control of your own faculties. We each respond to vulnerability in different ways. Some of us overcompensate, striving to overcome a situation or limitations. Some of us give in, deciding to let fate have its way with us and look for easier ways to cope. Others refuse to believe it, using denial as a defense mechanism. Or as I was taught in those early days, to affirm health and well-being by learning to find ways around limitations. I was taught early to search for ways to be healthy and strong and above all, to pursue happiness.
