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My Lovely Lady Lumps

 

    

        I keep feeling like, “why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”  I mean, women are instructed to do self exams. Okay, fine. No problem.  Not sure what I’m looking for, considering my breasts are “heterogeneously dense,” but okay.  

        Here’s the thing, though. I thought a lump was a lump.  This feels more like a pec muscle.  In fact, I started Shaun T’s Insanity-30 workout at the end of January after seeing him on a GMA clip.  He was talking about how he had just turned 45, so I thought, “Well hell–I’m about to be 44. If he’s 45 and looks like THAT, I can do it!”  He says in the video, “Just do this for 60 days…” Ha! “Just” 60 days.  Okay.  Challenge accepted.

        About 21 days in, I had just finished my 30 minutes and placed my hand over my heart.  “Daaaaaang my pecs are getting big!”  Big ole muscle.  Then I placed my hand on my right side.  Nothing.  Actually a little concave on that side, since boob fat is the first fat to dissipate when you start a good workout routine.  “Uh oh,” I thought.  Luckily, I had a PCP appointment exactly one week later.

        When I showed the “lump” to my PCP, he was able to grab onto it like a handlebar.  When I went to the breast clinic for my biopsy consultation a week and a half later, the doctor was able to pick it up and walk his fingers all around it, making a mental picture of it in his mind.  Studying the topography of my tumor like a robot on the bottom of the ocean.

        But it also felt full in some spots, similar to when I was breastfeeding.  Not engorged, just a little full or heavy.  Those turned out to be my “nonmass enhancements.”  If you’re wondering what a “nonmass enhancement” is, join the friggin club.  Even the doctors don’t know what they are.  They’re not masses.  They are enhancements.  Nonmass enhancements are not automatically cancer.  My doctor was very clear on that–it doesn’t mean they are cancerous.  But mine happen to be.  

        So I have the handlebar and fullness.  That’s what my “lumps” feel like.  Women are told to do self exams, and that’s all fine and dandy, but we’re at a loss.  No one knows how to do them effectively.  I had had a normal mammogram not even 5 months prior to me finding my “lump.”  I also had a normal breast exam at the gynecologist only THREE months prior.  If the machine can’t find it and the professional can’t find it, how in the heck am I expected to find it?

        Needless to say, I wasn’t able to do the Insanity-30 workout every day for the 60 days, because I was interrupted by a cancer diagnosis and a couple of biopsies.  But, I am still doing it when I can and finding power in it.  I know once I have my mastectomy, I won’t be able to workout while I’m recovering, so I’m trying to *DIG SO DEEP* with Shaun T while I still can! (*That’s one of his catchphrases for those of you who aren’t familiar with him). 

        So for anyone with boobies (and that’s EVERYONE), watch out for those pecs.  Don’t feel like you’re being paranoid if you think you find something.  Anything.  Even a nonmass enhancement.  And if you aren’t the one that catches a lump (or a handlebar or a nonmass enhancement), don’t beat yourself up.  Sometimes even the machines miss the signs.