“Is there anyone I can call for you,” the doctor asked. There was no time to dwell over the initial shock of being told I had breast cancer.
I thought to myself, “No, my husband left me, my mother is dead, my aunt runs a daycare, and my dad is too far away. I had no one.” All I wanted was a flipping cigarette. I wanted to scream, cry, do something, but all I could do was sit there as though I didn’t hear anything she had just said to me.
“We need to get you across the hall for imaging,” she said. “Maryjo will take care of you.”
“I see you had Federal Blue Cross, Blue Shield insurance,” she stated,”but you don’t anymore. It’s okay, we will get it figured out.”
MaryJo stood a little taller than me. Her compassionate personality kept me calm and focused.
“Let’s get started,” she said.
Trying not to break down I followed her reluctantly across the hall to imaging. She handed me another gown and said, “Undress from the waist up.”
I remember taking my shirt and bra off trying desperately not to lose it. I felt trapped because I couldn’t leave. My emotions were high because not even a year had passed that I was burying my mother from ovarian cancer.
I’m ushered into the exam room
She feels my breast and then says with gloom
“You have breast cancer,”
She definitively says.
“How can you be sure?”
As tears filled my eyes,
I questioned the nurse
of the doctor’s expertise;
She’s never wrong,
but we will see.
MRI and biopsy
all in one day
I couldn’t take the stress
I just wanted to run away.
I knew she was right
and I couldn’t hide
the unknown would elude me
like the ripples of a tide.