So it was, a little over a week ago, that I received the letter I did not want to receive from the radiologists' office. As had happened before, there were "things" seen in my mammogram that needed a second look. I scheduled my appointment and followed through.
Something I noticed, that I had not noticed before, was the ominous quiet of the waiting room inside the office. In the outside waiting room people were talking, comparing notes, discussing the discomfort of different procedures and generally relaxed and open to being part of the community created by the situation. Inside, once we had donned our pink examination gowns, the tone was entirely different and eerily quiet.
The women kept to themselves. Some read the magazines provided but most clutched their radiologist provided bag, filled with their belongings, and stared at the floor. Some of these same women had been animated and lively in the outside waiting room. Inside, they were different.
I too was different. I talk with people everywhere. Really. There was the guy on the subway, divorced from a "mixed" marriage and we discussed the difficulty in raising children that clearly had no defined race, the young man sitting on the bank of the Mississippi River that wanted to discuss the role of sex in a committed relationship and finally, and most recently, the woman in the quilt shop that was relocating to North Carolina and pleased that I was thinking of opening a shop there. She even gave me her phone number and email. But here, in this situation, I was afraid to break the silence. Because of the nature of the screenings requested, I was forced to wait for quite a while. The reason, calcifications, nodules and migrating tissue. Therefore, my mammograms required a more highly trained technician and a machine with different capabilities, so I waited and I watched.
Very quickly the women sized each other up, deciding who it seemed "safe" to sit next to, who was there for an annual, no problems indicated kind of visit; who might be problem free. And so it went. I was there for quite a while and it became clear, real early on that I was not the person to sit next to and how others decided that, I just don't know.
I couldn't help but wonder to myself. Here we all were, for the same reason, wouldn't it help if we were more open to each other? One women was there for additional screenings of her right breast, just like me. She was scheduled for an ultrasound, just like me. I can't help but think that we missed an opportunity. If we had been open to sharing perhaps we could have provided a sounding board for each other moving forward. A sort of "we're in this together" friendship. I can imagine the conversations, comparing doctors' suggestions, discussing second opinions and being supportive as only someone experiencing the same situation can be. Certainly a missed opportunity of sorts.
Breast cancer is scary. Each one of us knows someone currently battling the disease, or at least we know someone who has been somehow affected by the disease. Many of us have lost friends and loved ones and we are fearful that we could be next. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to whom the disease might strike next. Many women, with no history of any type of cancer in their families, are now sharing their lives with this disease. Perhaps if we were to be open to the opportunities presented by joining a community of women committed to supporting each other, through the entire process, including mammograms, we would be better prepared whatever the outcome. Just my two cents. Stayed tune for 1x - Annually, Part 3.
