I feel like I should confess the blaring obvious, so here goes; “…forgive me readers (whoever you are) for I have sinned the bloggers sin; it has been months since my last blog post…” Many times I have thought of post ideas, and now I have a backlog of them. Today, I want to catch you up on my non-traditional student adventures, not with how the second semester of my master’s degree went, but I am going to take you back to almost a year ago-(which will lead you to my spring break of this year). The time of summer classes at Western Michigan University is where “it” began in earnest. Oh, “it” had been bugging me, since about January. But I was way too busy, with classes and working, and traipsing from one West Michigan county to another, to take care of “it.”
This thing, this “it” was breast related. And it was concerning. Not the more tangible lump issues, because frankly that would have been easier, but something much more subtle. I will spare details, for now. It was my summer semester, and I was in the final classes of an undergrad minor in writing. I was taking my second poetry class, and I had been to see both a doctor, then a surgeon. I had already endured prodding, poking and ultrasounds, and was about to have a full out MRI. But, I had to get to class the night before. We poetry students were to meet and head over to Asylum Lake to have a nature walk, and listen to our instructor read poetry and then, write ourselves. After a bit of writing, we would share a little, and then walk a little more, and write again. All I could think about really though, was about those three letters, MRI. Most Ridiculous Incident. Many Reels Incandescent. Maybe Right Increments. Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Magnetically most, many, maybe. Maybe. Maybe it was cancer.
I wanted to be one of the young girls in my class so badly that night. I wanted to be traditional. But I was 44 years old, and beginning to realize that being in your 40’s is a little frightening. During that time period as I would drive about for work and to school, I was listening to CD’s from a book I have—“Poetry Speaks.” I had been trying at every opportunity to become inspired to write poetry, and I spent so much time in my car, I would listen to everything I could. Ann Sexton’s poem ‘The Operation’ was on that CD, and when it started to play in her own voice, I was startled into my first cry about the situation. My second cry happened while I undressed for the MRI.
The results were inconclusive. They could find nothing significant. So, on my merry non-traditional student way I went. But, there was one problem always just tugging on my right sleeve, beneath my right breast. The symptoms would not go away. So, nearly one year later-off I am sent to U of M. Yep, shudder. The University of Michigan. How I spent this year’s Spring Break. Off to have the first cancer center experience of my life. This time, my daughter was with me. The experience was disconcerting. On the early morning of my appointment I, along with about 15 other women, spent the next hours together.
Breast Cancer and Potential Breast Cancer Patients alike gather together, all very early in the morning in the general waiting room. One by one, in short increments, we are called in, taken to another waiting room, where we are instructed to disrobe from the waist up, and given a teal blue hospital gown to wear. There we sit, women together in an L-shaped room, in our gowns. Corralled together in our mundane and obediently decorated neutral-toned room. I ponder this group, old and young, of practically every race, sitting there in submission. Most of us have crossed our legs, and I notice everyone’s shoes and socks. I think about them, how early they got up and dressed this morning, and I wonder about their socks. What kinds of floors they padded on this morning-hardwood floors in tidy homes…old linoleum floors…plush carpet, worn carpet…tile? Then I think about their shoes. Were they waiting by solid core doors on little rugs of golds and browns? Or maybe tucked away in a hall closet on a shoe rack? I wondered too, what all of our shoes said about all of us. It helped to muse about these things, and not think about all of our breasts hanging there under our blue-green gowns. Breasts held up by our crossed arms tucked neatly above our belly buttons.
An older Jewish woman keeps us all going. She converses with women describing the adventures they had getting to the hospital. Another describes using her GPS, one woman talks about flying, and soon the conversation swings to overseas travel. All the while, women are called into a little room (well, I imagined it was little, I was never called into there), and some return to be seated again, and some emerge looking teary. It subdues our conversations for a bit, respectfully for each woman. Then, a couple of words spoken, and soon the conversation flows again. No one talks about the C-word though, nor does the word ‘breast’ emerge from anyone’s lips.
I am called in and out from a different door-clearly my first visit; the others almost seem to nod the recognition of this. I am put through first a series of questions, a manual exam of pressing and poking (just the beginning of the pressing, poking, squeezing, and manipulation) then sent back. Called out again, this time, for an ultra-sound. It is uncomfortable, as one part of this ‘thing’ is, there is some general discomfort most of the time. Just when I have had enough, it is over. Sent back again. Next call out- mammogram. More comprehensive than any I have ever had before.
I especially love the part, during the mammogram when the technician finally has your breast in the most unbelievable pancaked-ness, and she slips behind the little partition and says: “Now hold your breath.” I want to laugh if I could- a physically impossible task at the moment-because this is assuming that I am actually breathing! My real breath, well-it was squished out right along with my breast, and I begin to worry about the possibility of ever breathing fully again! By now, I am really feeling it—pain, and when I am finally allowed to leave, it is to now head up to the surgeon’s office. More poking, more prodding, more conversations. More mysteries, about what it is.
Here is what it is not: cancer. For now anyway, I can breathe and read Ann Sexton poems. Next Spring Break, I am going away somewhere far from Michigan.
But for now, until I can actually fly away, I did the next best thing. I got my first tattoo- a feather.
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