first off, my thoughts are with all the people affected by the london terrorist attacks. it seems utterly insane and surreal for some reason.
second off, it all may seem even more utterly insane and surreal than it would because i am rocking some pretty awesome painkillers. i had the boob cuttage surgery today, and everything appeared to go well. i was prepped at sibley hospital for a couple of hours, got an IV, hung out in a more-billowy-than-necessary hospital gown with totally sweet peagreen hospital-issued socks with rubber tracking on the bottom, then was promptly put into "twilight sleep" by the anasteialalaogogist, or however you spell that. woke up an hour later with a big old bandage under my right breast, feeling woozy but good.
i feel very lucky to have had this matter nearly resolved in under a month. did you know that if my mom (who, for those of you who didn't know and were wondering why a 25 year old was freaking out about breast cancer, had premenopausal, extremely advanced breast cancer nearly 10 years ago that was misdiagnosed for several months) wasn't the most hooked up breast cancer lady in all of DC, that i wouldn't have even had a mammogram or ultrasound until THE END OF JULY (after dealing with the lump in mid-june)? but thanks to her and her wonderful, kind breast specialist doctor colette magnant, i had an exam, ultrasound, and surgery within two weeks or so. this is apparently not usually the case.
really, it's kind of ridiculous. i was reading planned obsolescence a while back. she's a late-30s woman (i believe) with family history of the disease, and when she ran into some problems, it was SIX WEEKS until she could get a mammogram (everything turned out fine). i thought if you were any sort of woman with a family history of breast cancer, people were THROWING mammograms at you, and, like, running you down in the street with mammogram vans. wtf? i feel kind of idiotic and like the whole situation is unfair. i'm young and very likely there is nothing wrong with me, but because my mom is a warrior and knows how to work her way around the system and has a phonebook full of important contacts like oncologists and surgeons, i was lucky enough have attention paid to me and to not have to stress out for several months. whereas older women, who very may well have something wrong with them but who have never been in this situation before, have to wait weeks, even months, to even figure out if that lump they feel is benign or something that will change their lives forever.
it is bullshit, frankly. i feel like much of the time, women who feel a lump or a change in their breasts want to believe that nothing is wrong, so when they get put off by doctors or scheduling problems, they'll merely go along with it and try to forget what is happening. well, you shouldn't. you should be the bitchiest, most persistent patient that you can be. ask for early morning or late evening appointments. emphasize any family history of breast or ovarian cancer (especially if it is premenopausal). seriously. be a huge bitch. KF from planned obsolence wrote this in the comments of her mammogram post:
Thanks so much, all of you, for the good thoughts. I’m fairly sure everything’s fine, and that I just need to get the cystic thing under control, but the entire experience just reminds me (as Kari and I discussed here) how much I hate getting jacked around by the medical profession. There’s an arrogance in too many practitioners that insists that you, lowly patient, are in no place to ask questions or to demand more from your doctor than the five-minute listen-to-the-chest and blood draw every other year, because (a) you couldn’t possibly understand, and (b) I don’t have time for this. That’s bad enough in and of itself, but coupled with a too-frequent inability to actually diagnose what’s going on, and a total lack of concern about patient pain or anxiety, it just sends me up a tree. Grrrr.
and it's something i totally agree with. i'm lucky enough to have had wonderful doctors, and in this case, a woman who has been seeing my mother for ten years, but i realize that is rarely the case. no matter how offputting or dismissive a doctor may be, if you feel like something is wrong or has changed, make sure they know it and deal with it.
oh yeah, and also, you ladies out there: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, do self-breast exams! once a month, 2-3 days after your cycle. even if you're young. you should get very familiar with how you feel so that if anything changes you will know immediately. and don't think because you haven't had family history that breast cancer won't be a possibility. no one on my mother's side of the family had breast cancer before she did. just, you know, be aware. lumps aren't the only indicator of cancer. sometimes, there aren't lumps at all. unusual breast pain, rashes, inverted nipples and discharge are all something that should be examined by your gynecologist asap.
sorry for the stern, matronly attitude towards this, and sorry, boys, for how totally awkward and weird it must be to think about boobies in medical ways. especially on a blog that is either talking celebrity shit or is drunk. but this is important stuff, stuff i've been dealing with since i was 15 and stuff i will deal with for the rest of my life. only recently have i realized how uninformed young women can be about this topic, from talking to friends and reading stories on blogs. i mean, you love your boobs, right? as well you should. so take care of them!
