There is nothing quite like a health scare

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/03/2022 (1460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I recently had a mammogram. I’m too young to get one annually, but I found some lumps a while ago. They were deemed to be irregular tissue but must be monitored.

My appointment was a follow-up from one in 2020, after I discovered the lumps. It should have happened last year, but the waitlist is so long that this was the first appointment available to me.

The process is simple enough, and even though the squish is uncomfortable, it’s not so bad.

When you arrive, they give you a short gown for the top half of your body and have you sit in a little cubicle and wait. They take you into a room between the exam area and the waiting room that has a bunch of stalls for people to wait in privacy. You sit there until they call you to go with them or leave. After your mammogram, you wait for the all-clear from the doctor before leaving.

As I waited to get the all-clear, I heard another patient in one of the stalls humming along to Bedouin Soundclash on the radio, and the chatter between patients and staff members. A woman a few stalls over was having a conversation with her young child, and their voices filled the air. The wait seemed longer than last time, but they were busy, and I didn’t think much of it. Then, I heard them tell the person in the stall next to me, who went in for a mammogram after me, that they could leave.

My anxiety started to get the best of me.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever written about my health anxiety before, but it’s a beast. I am a recovering WebMD symptom googler with a great deal of health-related apprehension. My description sounds funny but it can be self-destructive at times.

I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. The pandemic has made it worse. My former GP, Dr. Morham, was good at talking me down and validating my concerns and anxiety.

As I was sitting there in that stall, realizing they had either forgotten about me or those irregular lumps painted a different picture than last time, I started to panic. I pulled a notebook out of my purse and started writing down my thoughts. Frantically. Worst-case scenarios filled my mind and poured onto the pages. I was scared.

I know that this sounds overly dramatic and even comical, and it is — but it’s also crushing.

The technician tapped on my door a while later and told me they wanted to follow up with an ultrasound because something was different than last time. Her voice was friendly and hard to take cues from.

There is nothing quite like a health scare, even if it’s not a catastrophic one, to make you stop and think about your priorities and examine how you spend your time. I say this sincerely and acknowledging my privilege. I am in no way likening my situation to people who are going through illnesses or situations much worse than mine. But it was a frightening pause in my hectic day-to-day life. It was a reminder that it shouldn’t take a moment like that to remind me I need to slow down and find ways to take better care of myself and simply enjoy moments without trying to squeeze so much stuff into them. Time is precious.

As it turns out, both the mammogram and the ultrasound showed the tissue had gotten bigger since last time. After the ultrasound, the doctor deemed the tissue to be nothing more than irregular.

We’ll look again next year.

shelley.cook@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @ShelleyACook