Lumpenboob or The new breast cancer pamphlet

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/12/2015 (3914 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Part One

The room may be a blur, but even without glasses, you’ll see the table reserved for you. Half-hollowed, like a shallow canoe.

The regular, head-sized pillow goes under the knees, to ease back strain. That tiny doll-pillow — yes, that — is for your head.

A union of needle and vein, and the room should begin to whirl. The anesthetist may even sing.

• • •

Your lump and you have history. Two years, you told your family doctor. Ten to twenty, the oncologist suggests. Two or twenty — your first lesson in discrepancy. (As your cancer journey progresses you’ll hear nothing that could, in any way, be construed as definite.)

You allow there have been others. One lump popped up just under your left clavicle soon after you bore your second child. Dissolved sometime in his teens. No one, doctor or other, says anything to that.

By contrast, you, my unlucky friend, will be pressed to the last detail.

Diagnostic Imaging

Dim and claustrophobic. The older-lady nurse stepping around you, excusing herself, squeezing your breasts between plastic plates is just doing her job. She may be apologetic and gentle — or not. Please, do your best to cooperate.

More shots, more angles may be called for by an unseen radiologist. The technician will lift your impossible breasts (yes, both are required), gripping and smoothing, gripping and smoothing. Step closer. That’s right. Put your arm here. Hug the machine. As upper plate hums toward lower — can it really be squeezed any further? — you may experience strange sensations and/or mental images: crushing carnage, breast hamburgers.

Neck twisted, face mashed on beige plastic, tender mammary extruded — a fish-pale flesh platter — try not to think about your appearance. Recall rather Keats’s urn, still bride in quiet profile, ravishment expected.

Should the nurse need to double-check, remain calm. She may have to reposition. Gripping and smoothing. Yes, there. Stay still. Try not to tighten your jaw.

Clinic loudspeaker un-announcement:

More happy shots! More happy, happy shots!

BTW, have you learned your lesson yet?

(Note: Your spirit may sag here.)

Next: Ultrasound

Young female technician. Cold gel on your breast. A device guided over your lump in an semi-sexual-supremely-irritating way. Over and over your lump. Click click. Click click. You may find yourself moved to pray: Oh, princess of silent sound, vestal keeper of the magic wand. Hurry, I beg you. Let this be over with.

Click . . . click . . . cuuh . . . lick. . . clickkk . . .

You may be moved to wonder, has she not been there already—several times? Sure she has. There, too. Dominatrix of the lumpen breast.

Next: Biopsy

What dark corner of the world is this? Blink and hum of machinery. Lie on your right side, exposing the naked left. Four— five? — gowned workers may circle. One may hold your elbow down, gently but firmly, behind your head. Meanwhile, the masked man with a long needle turns his attention to your breast. Remain chatty and cheerful.

Now for the armpit. Down its dark byways the node escapes. The masked man wants a chunk of it. In one hand the wand of ultrasound, in the other the needle-cum-scissor. No matter how you slice it, this will not be pleasant. Try to relax. Lie back and think of Anywhere Else.

Next: Official Word

Bad news, spits family doc with his usual weird arrogance. You’ll understand of course: he’s not angry but rather worried/scared. By all means, give him the benefit — hey, like House!

(If, at this point you feel a brief misty longing for Dr. Kildare — bedside, handsome — breaking the news gently while holding your hand, you may be excused. Do try not to dwell on it.)

• • •

Say you’ve fallen from coffee-shop afternoons to homelessness.

Say you’re thrown in a dirt-floored cell in a dangerous country.

Say you’re flipped from a car to a wheelchair.

What? Still not getting it?

Hospital loudspeaker un-announcement:

You are them, the them on the other side.

You and your tidy life.

Next: Adjustment

No eating sleeping joy as the mind/body protests. This may take a few weeks, or the rest of your life. Terror running amok in your belly, find the most technical literature you can. For instance, inform yourself on quantum physics. At your window, by all means send out hopeful beams: man with dog; rustling tree; kid on bicycle. But be prepared for alarming returns: Sorrow, Fear.

Here comes: the Surgeon

Look in his eye, but don’t be surprised to see your mother, dead now these eight years. The long scar where the breast you once suckled disappeared. The shrunken spine she toted to the end. Similarly, don’t be shocked if in the surgeon’s wandering pupil you spot the whirling paraphernalia of her disease — wigs, compression garments, sponge prosthetics. The last-ditch bowls of flax oil she doggedly spooned in.

• • •

Listen well to the statistics Surgeon quotes: Cancer-free prognosis after treatment — 67 per cent. Two out of three. Not bad.

Not good.

• • •

Don’t let your attention flag as numbers accumulate —

Weigh carefully your dissection in whole or part —

Pause to consider the merits of poison-then-slash over the reverse —

Hospital loudspeaker un-announcement:

Attention: Ms. Recent Diagnosis

Your new life — or (ahem) death-perspective is now served. Please . . . help yourself.

Now, take a step back and assess. Does the man set to cleave your breast and yank out a good chunk of underarm flesh — does he look like an optimist?

• • •

So you’ve decided: poison — uh, chemo — first.

Up the long curve of your capable veins . . . to the most remote, forgotten reaches of your system. You will actually hope for this.

Oh yes.

A waiting room full of you . . . Next!

The nurse smiles and asks how you are. Your first? Oh well, let’s get started. For you, she will not say, we’ve called in an old friend. . .

. . . Epirubicin. Better known as the Red Devil. Why? For the burn as it goes in. The lick of hellfire up the vein. Old standby in breast cancer.

Looks just like old-fashioned cherry Kool-Aid? Indeed. And administered the old-fashioned way. How’s that? The nurse sits beside you while pressing four 25-cc syringes — full slowly up your vein. How long will that take? About an hour.

Please. Have a seat, you’re not done. Two further hours need to drain from those bags above your head. The tube must therefore remain on the needle — and the needle, in your vein. Feel free to read or doze while awaiting the beep beep of freedom.

Hospital loudspeaker un-announcement:

One down, miles to go . . .

Have fun with it!

• • •

Not necessarily the comfort of parallel worlds. Not wholly the unimaginably big or small. Where was the source of solace in those long-ago quantum days? Lurking between theoretical points, in the multi-dimensional mesh of the everyday? The daily click of the lab lock? The turning lens of the microscope? The quirky hymn of the scientific method?

• • •

INTERMISSION 

Six months of molecular mayhem: nausea, mind/body in chaotic ontological relationship, sporadic deep depression — and hair loss. (Baldness, by the way, may feel like wearing a wet baggie.)

• • •

Part Two

Chemo complete, here U R in the OR, arms akimbo on arm plates — cruciform. Humming now, the anesthetist fiddles with tubes and needles.

A new theory you’ve encountered suggests your soon-to-be-cut-out lump is actually lifelong anger, physically expressed. Which causes you to wonder: What will be left when the surgeon excises it? And the fact you’ve donated it to research?

• • •

In the coming days and weeks, your leftover breast may resemble a water balloon — misshapen, multi-coloured, pendulous.

At times you may find yourself nostalgic. Where is the sectioned flesh now? (Resting quietly in a dark fridge? Splayed open in a Petrie dish? Between slides — a tumour sandwich?) But more to the point: What was the nature of your relationship?

Meanwhile, bruised skin fades to natural; nerves open their numbed throats and sing. Healing happens, cells grow and divide (burn and itch). Hunkered sulking in a dark corner of the body, Healing’s evil twin: Metastasis.

• • •

Home again, how to speak of the relevant breast without awkwardness: the operated-on breast? (cumbersome); the lumpy thing? (dismissive); the water balloon? (vague); the sore boob? (understated). Be patient, a name will come.

• • •

Somewhere beyond your visual field, a snap of latex. The ceiling whirs. The anesthetist sings on. If your mouth weren’t so dry, your mind muddied, you’d harmonize.

Hospital loudspeaker un-announcement:

Lumpenboob, lumpenboob! Here we come!

Despite melodrama potential, this is neither your cross of salvation nor bed of pain. Just a simple caress of the cerebellum, and off you spin: you and your lump going your separate ways. Count down now, my dear, and we promise you’ll not feel a thing.

 

Judy Millar’s latest book is Grave Concern (2012) and she lives in Calgary, Alta.