Breast cancer even sounds scary. Perhaps it should be called beast cancer. Women fear to hear those words and even delay seeing their doctor when they find a lump.
In the fall of 2000, my mother had surgery on her ankle. It'd been bothering her for years. Finally a doctor found that she had a torn tendon. While she was having medical tests in preparation for the tendon-repair surgery, a routine mammogram was done.
You've probably heard the complaint; "My feet are killing me." In this case, my Mom's feet saved her life.
The mammogram came back with a suspicious looking spot. More tests were done: a sonogram, more x-rays, and finally a biopsy. This test was positive for cancer.
She could not feel a lump. If it hadn't been for the mammogram, she'd have no clue that she had breast cancer. By the time a woman can feel a lump, she has had breast cancer for ten years according to Susan Love's The Breast Book.
I perseverated the thought; "My mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer." This fact took awhile to sink into my reality. I lost a dear friend to breast cancer in September, 1998.
With help from my travel agent, I managed to get down to Indiana without much delay. I didn't know if this would be the last time I would ever see my mother.
My mother had a lumpectomy in November, the day after her second great-granddaughter was born. She took a course of radiation treatments. She has been on the drug, tamoxifen. Over five years have passed since she had that lump removed. So far, so good.
