Big Lump …

cont. from (Women Sailing the Pink Sea)

I have contemplated my question for six weeks now and can now answer, “It just happened.”

“How could this happen?” is as unanswerable as, “Why am I here?” when not asked in reference to a senior moment. Why someone gets breast cancer is complicated beyond anyone’s understanding let alone mine and probably has many answers, none of them nearly telling the full story. The fact remains, it happens and it happens to women, and men too. It happens everyday. Breast cancer just happens, just like shit happens.

When I first heard from Diane that she had “a BIG lump” and “knew about it for a while” and further
“was sure it was cancer”, I was baffled as to why she did not get it checked, right away. Even though I wish she could change the fact that a BIG lump was left uninvestigated by a simple mammogram and biopsy I cannot. I think I understand…no, I do understand why she waited until she knew she could not dismiss it any longer. It is easy to deny our fragility, our mortality. It is easy to think, “Not me.” Undiagnosed breast cancer, that has not metastasized and ravaged the rest of the body, does not make you feel sick, much less make you feel like you are in mortal danger. It is asymptomatic.

The late Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, illustrated this so perfectly during his now famous
“Last Lecture” by knocking off several vigorous one-armed push-ups immediately after he announced he had terminal cancer. I did the same thing after I was diagnosed, but in the privacy of my bedroom but I must confess not with one arm. Knocking off push-ups seemed to validate, that in spite of the fact that I was told I had cancer, I was very strong. Because in the early stages, breast cancer is generally without symptoms we must overcome the unrealistic optimistic thinking that it will not happen to ME and just get screened, especially if we feel a lump. Artist, Camille Rose Garcia said it perfectly, “I think of denial as a painful form of optimism.”

I still do not have an answer for the second part of my question about my friend Diane, “let alone her?”
But after contemplation I know it simply does not matter. It just happened, and it happened to her.

Now that I have published Sailing the Pink Sea, I have learned that some friends have assumed wrongly that I did not get my mammograms as I should have, when I should have. Ouch. I don’t know why that hurts, but it does. Do they blame me somehow for what happened to me? Is it that we, as a society, believe we can completely shield ourselves from sickness with good clean living? Do we, unconsciously and without reflection, blame cancer on the patient? Or is it simply that we feel a need so profound to answer that question, “How could this happen to anyone, let alone her, or me,” we must apply fault.

To some extent I believe, sadly, that we do. We read articles, hear broadcasts and even read on cereal boxes that we can reduce our chances of getting cancer by doing this or not doing that. For every thing I can name that I did “good” I can counter with at least one thing I did that was “bad.” I was a vegetarian … My mother took DES. I exercised (a lot) … There was a leak in a uranium mine’s holding pond in the town I grew up in. I breast fed … Two of my aunts died of breast cancer. I did not take hormones … I smoked when I was young. I avoided milk, eggs and cheese that came from animals that were given hormones …
I lived near a tailings pile. I drank in moderation … I sometimes drank too much. I had many x-rays when I was a teenager … I kept my weight down. I lived down wind from nuclear testing … I did self breast exams. I got breast cancer … I found it early with a mammogram … I survived.

Cancer happens. Diane is doing great and I am proud of her.

Debbie

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