Waiting

I was fifty eight when I first noticed the indentation in my left breast after showering one morning. “Hmmm, that’s interesting,” I thought. I felt around but didn’t find a lump. I forgot about it until my next shower and again let it flutter to the back of my mind. I wasn’t afraid. I had faced the most frightening thing in life two years before when my daughter was diagnosed with stage four synovial cell sarcoma. I ignored it for a few more days before I decided I should make an appointment with my ob/gyn. I was due for my regular exam anyway.

She looked me over and felt me up, then wrote an order for a diagnostic mammogram. Explaining that I would have my usual mammogram and then an ultrasound if it was deemed necessary, she told me I could get dressed. “Did you feel anything?” I asked. “No,” she said. I am not sure she would have told me if she had.

I scheduled the procedure; the earliest they could fit me in required a two week wait. I told my husband and asked him to go with me for the appointment. The waiting was not very hard; I stayed busy and only thought about it a couple of times a day. I called my best friend, who was a breast cancer survivor, and told her. She made me promise to call after my appointment and let her know what we found out.

My husband had a dream one night during those two weeks that I was having a heart attack and wouldn’t let him call 911. He could feel my heart beating like crazy and the numbers on his phone were all backwards. Then he realized that he had to call 119 to get help. The same night I had a dream that I hung sculptures of the Mad Hatter and the Jabberwocky on my living room wall. I am sure that both dreams have deep psychological implications.