It’s so weird…

I know…that’s my neck.  Neck is good.

Boobs, not so much.

I haven’t written in my blog in a very long time.  I love writing.  I love creating, especially when it comes from reality, from the heart.  My reason for writing is to share: my fears, my strength, my experience, hope, insanity, or whatever someone gets out of reading what I say.  If I reach one person, my blog is a success…even if I write once a damn year.

Last Wednesday, I had my yearly mammogram.  So what?

But Friday, I get a call back that “there is a spot on my left breast” and “could I come in Monday for an ultrasound and further imaging”?  You know…you drop everything for “further imaging”. Work, school, family.  Doesn’t matter.  You are THERE.

Friday to Monday is a VERY long time.  Oncology nurses are the worst.  We know.  We know how people are diagnosed out of the blue.  How people don’t have family history and still get breast cancer.  How we can be riddled with cancer at any given moment in time.  If you are an oncology nurse, or take care of one, you are nodding right now.

I camped over the weekend with my dog, hoping to keep my mind off things.  It worked for the most part. Except, I can’t control what happens when I sleep.  I had nightmares where I overheard my co-worker, Leesa, explaining to someone else that I was “forensically correct” (which isn’t a really term BTW).  When she was asked what that was, she explained that I met eight out of ten criteria for positive breast cancer, and “not the good kind”.

Yes. Enter the mind of an oncology nurse.  We are riddled with cancer at any given moment in time.  And…while this is not true.  We see so much tragedy in our work that it is not possible to belay the wonder.

This morning, I ambled to work to distract myself from the impending “additional imaging” that was scheduled at four o’clock.  I told myself “people do this shit everyday” and “don’t panic” and “this is what you look like the morning before cancer’.

Yes.  It’s fucked up.  But it’s real.

I realized in the last few days what our patients go through.  We see them AFTER diagnosis…like what happened before is somehow a cartoon, a memory or fact.  I get the weight of the diagnosis and how fucked up it is.  How devastating it is.  How scary it must be.  But it is from the OUTSIDE.  I really don’t know.  And I know it.

Today, I got a glimpse.

I know I am not immune.  Today, and the last few days, showed me this.

My imaging today showed nothing.  The doc said she expected to see a large cyst.  Today, there was nothing.  We did ultrasound.  We re-imaged in a different way than last week.

Nothing.

So, they want me to come back in six months.

Um. Okay.

What the EFF did they see?  Where did it go?  WTH?

For an ONC nurse, this is a little bit torture.

And yet…it’s another lesson in lack of control.  If I do not want it to control me, to drive me insane, to dictate my life…I must let it go.

DAMMIT TO HELL.

Okay.