So Singular in Each Particular
Both me and my blog have a cancer history (above), specifically a Breast Cancer History, and in honour of that history and the incredible women in my family who have been touched by this scourge I’m, well… In the Pink for the rest of October…
It’s somewhat appropriate really. My mum is the next Singular woman to get a diagnosis and a date with a masectomy. Heck, she may even make hers a double.
Bloody Hell – have you or your girls been checked?
I have given a lot of thought to writing about the mammogram which I had this morning.
For a start there’s the grumpy b*tch on reception who really doesn’t make a nervous 1st timer welcome as she walked in the door and barks at you for using your phone…
There’d have to be a mention about the other lovely ladies who are very sensitive about handling your well… precious vessels.
There’d be a mention about the procedure itself (eep), the mammogram that is, the ultrasound was far less intense though a little, well, sticky…
I could write at length but I’m not going to.
All I’m going to say is that it was uncomfortable to be sure but by no means unbearable. There was no embarassment or discomfort about being so exposed.
And more importantly, I will add, that if you should be having early checks due to a family history, or if you have any kind of concern about your girls and you have been putting it off.
STOP IT!!! STOP IT AT ONCE.
Go and get it done, for the sake of your health and the sake of your loved ones.
[here endeth the lesson]
It is by no quirk of fate that I am here. and don’t mean in Australia, or in my bed blogging this post (yes the Dell has moved back to bed, it’s where ’tis warmest), I mean Here, In Existence.
My life is, because of one extraordinary woman. My grandmother. Edna.
As a mother of 4, 2 of them twins, she was diagnosed in 1945 with both breast cancer, and with pregnancy. In 1945 treatment was dangerous, unpleasant and experimental. Drugs to treat one would no doubt finish the other and to her this was untenable. Advised to terminate, to save herself for the sake of the children; she opted instead to do nothing. Nothing; for the sake of the child. Nothing; not even once she delivered, Nothing; till the infant was weaned.
That’s Courage.
She died when my mother was 3.
Jaq and Jill; twins who shared everything, a womb, a room, a birthday, a diagnosis, scars, prostheses and treatment stories. They shared also the same courageous mother as mine did and now it has been 4 years since Jill died too, that same hideous death 54 years later.
And so here I am, staring down the barrell of a mammogram, with a referral that is 2 months old burning a whole in my diary. And now, thanks to Mrs Brick I am without the excuse of the price for the procedure. She overpaid me enough for a mammogram when I babysat last week. To make sure that I was without that excuse. And it’s been 10 days and her cheque is still burning a hole in my wallet.
Don’t admonish me please, it’s tough enough without being nagged. Just nod and smile as I am making myself accountable to you… Tomorrow I will call the clinic. Admonish me not, for waiting this long, pick up the phone and go and get yourself checked out too.
