Time Stood Still

It was sometime in January and just before Martin Luther King Day.  I had just put my second child to bed.  She was 18 months old, and I probably should have weaned her sooner but she still loved to comfort nurse to sleep, sometimes in the middle of the night, and in the morning.  Occasionally she would nurse when I came home from work in the afternoon.  I loved those moments of looking at her face as she got all the comfort she needed from my body.  Her eyes would close and her sweet, small hands would cup my breast as she nursed.  I felt a bit like Super Woman that my body could still comfort, nourish, and relax my child so easily.  Putting her to bed was the easiest part of my day.

Since I was not sleeping much, I had taken to showering at night.  I was tired.  Bone tired and school mornings came early.  I ran my shower water as hot as the water pump is set.  That is the way I like my showers.  I washed my hair and moved to shave my underarm.  As I moved my hand away from my arm, it grazed my breast.  I think that the water suspended in the shower for that moment as my body ran cold from my head to my toes.  The lump that comes so easily now formed in my throat for the first time.  I shook my head.  I must be imagining it.  So, a second time, I intentionally felt of my breast.  No.  I was not imagining it.  There was something there.  My mind began to catch up with my hand.  I started rationalizing.  I had been nursing for a year and a half.  It must be another round of mastitis.  I had treated this breast for mastitis multiple times.  But, then, my brain countered, this was not a painful spot like the ones I felt when mastitis was the culprit.  This felt different.

I moved through the motions of getting out of the shower, drying off, and getting into bed.  My brain would not turn off.  The lights were still on in our bedroom and Jeremy, my husband, was already in the bed.  The room was quiet.  I broke the silence, "I felt a lump."  He looked back at me and immediately shook the concern.  "I am sure it is fine," he responded.  "Feel it."  He put his hand out to feel and I guided him. His eyes widened.  "I am sure it is fine."  We began rationalizing together, and I decided to put it out of my mind.  We started the conversation that would replay for the next several months.  "I have no family history, we had our first child before I was 30, I am only 36, I am running at least 4 times a week and preparing for a 10K, I am nursing....for crying out loud...and that alone is supposed to protect your body."  Neither of us said the word we were rationalizing away, but we both were thinking of the same dreaded word.  We maintained that Cancer was not going to be part of our vocabulary.  We pushed the worry aside.  He held me.  I turned off the lamp beside the bed and we slept.

I am surprised, now looking back, that it was a peaceful sleep.  I truly didn't think much about the lump as I moved through the next day.  

Martin Luther King weekend came and this meant a 3-day weekend.  We decided to make the hour drive up to Gallatin to see my family.  While Jeremy and Dad were in the living room and mom and I were in the kitchen, I confided in my mom.  "I found a lump."  She looked back at me, worried, "what do you mean?"  "On my breast.  The other night before bed.  I felt a lump.  Want to check it?"  I had her feel and she nodded.  Yes, she felt it too.  I wasn't making it up.  She advised seeing my OB/GYN.  I dismissed this idea.  Certainly, it was nothing.  

However, this nothing that was lodged in my breast kept bugging me.  I would feel it nightly now after the toddler was asleep.  Yep....still there.  One Wednesday in my classroom, I told my friend and confidant, Nancy, that I had felt a lump.  She buried her sister-in-law the previous November.  The loss was caused by Cancer.  She took lumps and bumps seriously.  "Get to the dr.  Today," she said.  I told her I would call.  I didn't.

She began to call me at least twice a week and ask if I called my dr.  Mom did the same.  Both asked if it had changed.  No.  I don't think it changed.  Finally, right at the end of the month, I called.  My nurse comforted me on the phone, reassuring that it was most likely nothing.  However, yes, I should come in the next day.

So, on a Tuesday afternoon, I drove to my doctor in Nashville. Dr. Trabue delivered both of my babies and my pregnancy with Adeline, my youngest daughter, was trying at best.  So, I trusted and still trust his judgment.  He has an air of calm about him and wisdom because he has been practicing for 30 years at least.  

He felt the lump.  He sat back in his chair, hands on the back of his head.  He looked at me gently and at ease.  "Well, Leslie...you have no family history.  You are young.   You were under 30 for your first child.  You are in good shape.  You are still only 36.  You have less than a 1% chance that this is anything to cause concern.  It is most likely a cyst.  Let's do this.  Let's watch it.  Watch for 6 weeks and if it does not go away, call me."  I nodded, agreeing.

I watched him draw a picture of my breast in his chart.  He circled where the lump was.  I refocused.  6 weeks.  This sounded like the best possible plan and it also sounded positive.  This was nothing - just like Jeremy and I thought.  We were going to watch it.    Certainly in 6 weeks, it would be gone.  I put it out of my mind.  There was no reason to keep checking it daily.  It was a cyst.  I was not worried.

Prologue

In April 2015, I received the first big curve ball of my life.  A diagnosis that sent my mind reeling, my faith questioning, and my health changing.  At 36, my health was fully intact and strong.  I had just completed a 10K run and was planning my next one.  Cancer was the farthest thing from my mind.  This was one of those moments that forever changed me.  The cliche is that life happens while we are busy making other plans.  I was busy with my own plans for my life and spent many months lamenting the loss of those plans.  It is in retrospect that I can see now how life was unfolding for me during this time.

Perhaps I should have started this blog then as a way to capture in real time my thoughts and emotions through the journey.  However, for me, it is in reflection that I am able to see where I was, where I have been, and where I am now.  This blog will trace that journey.  It will be a way for me to share my own experience and what it taught me.

As a deeply private person, I will share thoughts and experiences that I have previously kept private.  However, I hope that in sharing, I will grow through my own reflection.  Somewhere in the back of my mind is the hope that someone else will pick up this blog and that it will help them along their journey.  With that said, each journey is individual and different.  I would never think that my journey would be a cookie cutter for someone else, but I have to believe that there may be similarities along the way.

The truth is, the journey is what it is for me.  It is mine to own and mine to share.  So, today, with this first post, I begin that process of sharing.