Unexpected Beginnings: Part 1

It begins with a promise I made to myself when I turned 50.

It begins when I decide I will follow ALL THE PROTOCOLS for health recommendations. I share blood with Marlis Gray, my mama bear. She does not generally go to the doctor unless a limb is falling off so it's been a hard lesson to learn, but I am determined. I will do what my doctor suggests. I will have the blood tests and the mammograms and the Cologuard and all the stuff. I am 53 and this is my third January doing all the stuff.

It begins on a bright and cold January day when I leave extra early just to take photos of the deep purple and ink blues of the sky as it shifts and changes and as if I am the painter, together we make our way towards light. 

It begins in the waiting room, people watching at it’s finest. Older couples, single women, random toddlers with their mother, feeble women with caretakers. 

It begins with the mammogram and me always wondering if they have a unit called “Small Talk While Smashing and Manipulating Boobs” for the technicians. From my end, I just can’t do it. “Is this ok?” seems ridiculous to ask as it is never really ok. Turning, tucking, leaning in or out, lifting, holding this to show that-- all of it is an unnatural way to contort. But technically, yes, I am ok because there is no choice. It’s not childbirth and there is only one way to do it and that is to get all the way through it so it’s ok.

It is ok. 

It begins with me forgetting to check the results. I always have boring results in any medical test I take. My husband crows with glee at my blood work as it looks like the textbook goal. And I always see the message that says, “Thank you. We will see you next year.” And so it begins when my phone rings and it never rings because they want me to come back to take a more detailed picture.

It begins when Bob says this is no big deal. This happens in 50% of women. 

And so it begins when I go back for a longer and more uncomfortable 3D mammogram.

It really begins when the tech pulls out her marker and I feel it. She is marking me and then it begins, me knowing that something is not right when she places that fine tip to my cold skin not once but twice. My fear is pinpointed to that moment. I stop breathing and the tears float up from the deepest place. My eyes are fixed on a beige wall and I wonder, is this how it begins? My ending? I am not prone to drama. Ha! Maybe maybe I am. I am a functioning depressed person currently not depressed but my point is my head space. I like to think I am practical but my best friend who is teaching me it’s ok to have the feelings out loud and to not be ok, tells me I must let them rush in and feel them in order to not be swallowed in them. So in that dark cocoon with the machine buzzing and my breast contorting to please the tech, I let my tears fall and my breath hitch and she stops and rushes to me and says, “It’s ok. It’s ok.” I stare at her. I think, “This is not ok” but keep it to myself and wonder how they teach people to get through these moments. She is kind. She is trying. She has a job to do. Take a good picture. No! Take a great picture!

And so without any words, just some back rubbing and a Kleenex, we begin again.

It begins when I see the doctor. She says, “This is exactly why we do yearly mammograms. If there is something, this is all of us doing our best from you coming in yearly, us catching the smallest of small, and developing a plan. It’s going to be ok. No matter what, it is going to be ok.”

It begins when they ask for a biopsy, a seemingly benign procedure for how often I have heard the word. But it is not benign. At least not for a breast.

It begins when I lay face down on a table that gets raised mechanically. My boob is hanging through a hole. One tech is at my breast, the radiologist is also at my breast doing the actual procedure, another tech is sitting in front of me, talking me through the whole deal. One person is taking photos, another is a supervising physician orchestrating the whole shebang. There are noises- sucking, buzzing, clamping, whirring, popping, voices murmuring, clicking, my uneven breath. Again, “Are you ok?” There are times I want to laugh at the bizarreness of it all. This is modern medicine? It is still barbaric in ways as bodies can only evolve so much, right? A breast is still a breast and no two are alike and they were not made to bend to the will of a machine. To have a stranger stroke your nipple so it fits into the hole in a certain way to get the needle in just so. This is not 50 Shades of Gray. It is 50 Shades of what the fuck?

It begins with calcifications. That is what I have. It begins when the doctor says, “Fifty percent of all women have calcifications which require nothing but keep doing that yearly mammogram. But the others, the ones like mine, can be suspicious. They are not cancer.” I am supposed to feel joy at this. The good news is IDON’T have cancer. 

But.

It begins with the But.

But these fine little spots, so tiny and clustered in such a way, they suggest there could be cancer, they may promote the growth of cancer and so it begins when they say, we must remove them. 

And so I begin again with another biopsy. As long as I am having surgery on this spot, let’s just double check that other spot. I have two clusters. It will be a bargain, two spots removed in one surgery. 

It begins with me not knowing much else yet. I have not heard if the second biopsy, the one where it all catches up with me and I let the tears fall and my voice crack right in the middle of the circus. They must stop the show when it begins, my tears, and the nurse pressing the Kleenex into the crevice of my eye. “It’s ok, “ says the lead doctor. “This is a lot.” I say, “I haven’t really understood all of it. I know, but I don’t know and it’s just a lot.” They listen. They let me cry. And when my breath returns to normalish, it begins again.

It begins with a deep knowing that it is ok to not be ok and with me trying to allow all of that. The story I had written for this January, one where I would sink into my Iowa story and let it unfold even more. January was writing and not appointments. January was planning a book and not biopsies and surgery. 

So it begins with allowing what I will make space for-- my uncertainty, my willingness to feel, and my ability to set it aside and revisit Iowa because no matter what may be removed from me, that part, this northwest Iowa girl remains.

It begins with knowing women are miracles and jugglers and empaths and magicians and Queens and priestesses and warriors and fragile tender hearts who get to control their narrative especially when the story is attempting to write itself. 

It begins with knowing I am the writer of this story. 

It begins with me and each day, each hour, where I get to begin again.