But there are so many ways to start this kind of thing:
I could start by telling you how early we detected my newest creation. Early. It's really early.
Or perhaps I could start by saying that it's tiny. Really tiny. 11 - 12mm diameter in fact.
Or by saying it's the "good kind of cancer", if there is such a thing, and it turns out there is. Or rather, not that there is a "good kind of cancer", more that there is a "bad kind", and then there is the "really awful, aggressive, nasty-piece-of-shit would-shoot-a-baby-without-remorse, sociopath kind of cancer" that gets passed down the generations. I have the first one - the bad cancer, not the bad bad bad bad bad cancer. So it's a very. good. sign.
But in all honesty, I probably really should have started by telling you to just take a seat first. (Are you sitting? Good.) And then tell you that I had some news - news which is bad news, but that is good news really when you consider all the bad news. News that might be a bit of a shock to you, but I am telling you because I love you and I know that you care about me, so I wanted you to hear it from me personally. I didn't want you to hear it on the grapevine, because the grapevine could make thing appear worse when you don't know all the facts, and clearly, if you can hear my voice, see my face, read my blog personally, you will see that I AM DOING JUST FINE, OK????
That last way to start telling people? That's how I've spent the past 2 days, perfecting my "don't get a shock" technique by using it on my family, and closest friends. Well, except to say that's certainly not how my parents got the information - my poor parents had to absorb their own shock that their eldest daughter had a very suspicious and quite worrisome lump deep down in her dense left breast tissue while seeing the brunt of their daughter's own shock streaming down her cheeks in liquid form at Breast Screen Victoria. I can't even imagine what my parents must have been going through. They have been amazing throughout this whole process. And they are certainly hiding their own worries, thoughts, stresses and concerns away from me so that they can be supportive of whatever it is that I decide to do. Maybe they discussed that that would be their approach, maybe they didn't, but they are listening to what I need or want, and they are listening to the doctors, and they are letting me make up my own mind about what is important to me and they are not judging. They are not judging at all. I feel like weirdly, we have all grown up, but we have grown up because I need to be their child once again.
I will tell you though, I never thought I would wish my breasts were not so young. That biopsy was the worst. The WORST! In fashion magazines, 40-year-old bazoongas are considered old - you never ever ever see them, and they are certainly never discussed. But if you want to feel great about your 40-year-old bra stuffers, head on down to a Breast Screen centre where they are considered "oh my gosh, so young!". They simply can't flatten your boobs enough for the mammogram or push a biopsy needle through to the offending tumour, because you still have very dense breast tissue. The staff there won't be able to stop talking about how young and dense your boobies are. And except for the fact that due to that density, the biopsy will take a horribly lengthy hour (because JUST TO GET TO THE TUMOUR, they need to biopsy out healthy tissue that they can't push through) and it will be horribly painful and awful and they will have to make 2 puncture wounds and give you 3 local anaesthetics instead of just the one…. except for that? You will leave knowing that your boobies were still so young that they were the talk of the breast screen centre, and the major cause of stress for the radiologist who had to use all her strength to push and push and push. At least she got a good workout. Way to boost your ego! So there you go, 40-year old boobies are not old, not old at all. Some 40-year-old men might bear that in mind….
OK. So we've established that I've told some people, and we've established that I have the good kind of cancer, and that I have young dense breast tissue (that's purely an opportunity to gloat, I suppose) and we've established that I really frightened my poor, ever-supportive parents when they turned up to breast screen.
This all happened last Thursday, when I got recalled to Breast Screen so that they could double check my original mammogram from a few weeks earlier. Some of you may remember that I had posted a status about it. It is unusual for women under 50 to go for a mammogram, but this is a longer story that involves a random woman on a mission in the dog park, and it is late and I am exhausted from all of the telling and the running to doctors and nurses and pathology things so I will leave some things for another post, and believe me, there are some things! Things that might very well include a provocation entitled, "Private Health Funds: Cunts?". So stay tuned.
(ps. Dear family reading this, I'm sorry for using the C word. But they totally deserve it.)