FINDINGS
I am having chest pain. Rather, I am having breast pain. Only on the left side, always on the left side. I would call it phantom, but it actually hurts. This is not a figment of my imagination; this is a reminder. A reminder that my body does keep score and no matter how much my life grows around the trauma, my body remembers and will remind me from time to time of what we have been through.
It's May 21, 2024. I get my shot next week. I get my mammogram the week after that. These reminders are always tied to the surveillance state that is remission. Because while I may be cancer-free, I am not and might not ever be free from being watched.
This is both a good and bad thing. I do not want to have a recurrence. I do not want my cancer to come back. I also do not enjoy mammograms and MRIs and follow up appointment after follow up appointment after follow up appointment.
This is what it is to live with a chronic illness, to be disabled,1 to have your body and life fundamentally changed by something that happened to you, something that was not your fault, something the gods conspired to allow into your life. This is what it is like to live with a thorn in your side2.
I am having chest pain. Rather, I am having breast pain. It is sharp. Concentrated between the edges of my left rib cage and my nipple. It radiates upward toward my collarbone, but rarely ever reaches beyond the space that is this half of my left breast.
Sometimes, when I have breast pain, I wonder if it is because the cancer is back, my cancer is back. I have begun to forget about appointments. My brain knows they are important but has also overslept for follow ups with my oncologist once or twice. I leave my house a little bit late every time I am required go to the hospital as an act of resistance. I put off scheduling appointments because the administrative costs of being or having been sick3 always feel too high a price to pay. But even if my brain is resisting, my body always remembers and never ceases to remind me.
When I have the pain, I talk to my breast. Ask it what it needs. “Are we having this pain because you are trying to tell me that something is wrong?” or “Are we having this pain because you remembered that you are about to be stretched beyond your means, placed between two polycarbonate plates, and then squished down into a form I would never recognize all in the name of getting a picture to make sure you haven’t decided to betray us again?”
The answer is usually yes to the latter and no to the former.
I have gotten used to my scar tissue. I used to think it meant the cancer was back, my cancer was back. But my scar tissue is stable and doesn’t move scan after scan after scan.4
When I have the chest, excuse me I mean breast pain, I palpitate my boobs like the doctors do. Have learned from experience how to give myself an exam5. We each do it differently though—breast surgeon to oncologist to radiation oncologist to me. The only hands that don’t feel foreign on my breast, that are not too cold to the touch, that do not also cause me to feel breast pain upon examination are my own. I always ask the techs if I can set myself up in the machines so that they do not have to touch me, so that no one else is touching my breasts. I do my best, but they know better. I am never able to get it exactly right.
Ibuprofen doesn’t help the mammogram hurt less. But Valium does make the MRI marginally less excruciating. It doesn’t hurt in the traditional sense, like a mammogram does, but it is very loud in that chamber and the air is stale there. It is hard to lie or stand prostrate for as long as they tell me to.
“Breathe in and hold.” Sometimes for 30 seconds, sometimes for a minute or two. It always feels longer and louder and hurts harder as the scan goes on and on and on. It has not gotten any easier to show up and allow myself to be surveilled even though at this point I know what I have been forced into.
They have gotten faster at giving me my results though. What used to take days now takes hours. If nothing is wrong, I can have my results by the time I get home. They are comparing pictures.6 Making sure nothing has changed.7
I live for those results every 3-6 months. In fact, I live my life in 3-6 month increments. Sometimes 4-7 or 4-8 months if I have been difficult and decided to push an appointment back so that cancer no longer gets in the way of my independence. I can push my shots and bloodwork back but not my scans. Those must be done every 6 months. No flexibility there.
We schedule my scans a year in advance and I build my calendar around them. Know what season it is by the breast pain.8
more soon,
Gabrielle
2nd Corinthians 12:1-10
Past, present, future
FINDINGS: Post-surgical changes are stable. There are benign calcifications. Linear marker(s) correspond(s) to incision site(s).
FINDINGS: There is heterogeneous fibroglandular tissue. There is minimal symmetric background parenchymal enhancement. Right Breast: No suspicious enhancement or mass. Left Breast: Benign posttreatment change to the inferior breast. No suspicious enhancement or mass. Other: No enlarged or morphologically abnormal lymph nodes.
12/20/19
12/28/2022 and prior
This in someways has removed the drama of it all. Which is of course a good thing, I am healthy. But because my body still worries and remembers, it often feels like a big build up for a what is still a big, but has in some ways become less extended praise break.
I try not to take my health—clear scans for granted. But when the lead up feels big and the moment of getting the news feels small, it becomes harder and harder to endure the reminders. I wonder what my breast tissue is remembering for.