Routine Follow Up Test

The turn of the year came and went with not much fan fare.  Sometimes early January hits me heavily and other times I realize it's passed in hindsight.  This year was an odd mixture of both.  January 4th is the anniversary date on which I was first diagnosed with breast cancer.  That date came and went in 2023 without me even realizing its significance.  It was a few days past that I realized it had been over seven years since cancer had been much more than a mere memory in life's rearview mirror.  The significance hit me oddly this year and I had a very short-lived moment of overbearing fear which caused me to suck in my breath and voice inside my head, "I wonder when cancer will be back?".  

I've come to realize that processing life is not about dismissing fear, but processing it through the lens of naming it for what it is, allowing yourself to feel it, identifying the different nuances around the feelings and allowing it to slip away until it needs to be processed some more.  So I allowed myself to feel those feelings, identified that they came from very real experiences which I have lived and slowly those feelings of fear slipped into the background.

In 2011, shortly after I had finished surgery, chemotherapy and the first steps of reconstruction, breast implants were surgically placed.  I was told that in around ten years I should have a breast MRI done to make sure the implants are still in good condition because sometimes an implant can develop a leak which is hard to identify in other ways.  

Back in December of last year, I decided to go ahead and schedule that MRI.  We had moved a year earlier and I had just established a new primary healthcare provider locally.  January 12th was the day the MRI was done.  It was a pretty straight forward test... slightly uncomfortable because you have to lie on your stomach with your arms above your head for a period of time, but really not a big deal.  

Being the realist that I am (my husband would say pessimist), I often process a range of scenarios, including worst case, so I can be prepared.  In this situation, I'd processed worst case scenario as my implants needing to be replaced.  This would mean a surgery to replace them.  Not fun, but certainly doable.  Situations don't usually catch me so off-guard, but when I received the results of the MRI a little over a week later, and saw the words "small enhancing mass" with a follow-up ultrasound recommended I realized that I had truly underestimated the worst case scenario.