especially when life decides to take several great big bites out of your backside, one right after another in quick succession! At least I still have something to sit upon.
After finally (mostly - still) recovering from the virus/pneumonia/stress test/car repairs/snow storm, and so on, I found out the little lump I could "still" feel in one of my female appurtenances from a prior biopsy (I thought) turned out to be something new and ominous rather than old and familiar. (sigh, sigh, sigh!) So now I and my loved ones are dealing with the stresses that attend such discoveries in that the surgeon who keeps track of these things in my case due to the inherited genetic predisposition for breast cancer (84% chance of getting it-not good odds) thinks it is likely cancer. At least it is not the same situation my poor sister had to face with the leukemia and, while certainly far from rosie, not as frightening as such a situation once was before medical science made many of its amazing breakthroughs.
There is still a lot of information yet to be gathered in my case. So far the only invasive procedure that has been carried out has been a fine-needle aspirate of the tumor, and those results, while not wholly conclusive, will be in on Monday. If they see cancer cells we will know for certain two weeks earlier than otherwise, but even if they don't see anything I will still need to have a needle biopsy in ten days which will be definitive. Oh, POOP!
Of course, given my family's history with such things first thoughts are far from cheerful and my own mortality, though not for the first time in my life, flashed before me as I wondered if this was going to end up being "it." At least there will be quite a bit of time between now and the arrival of "it" so there are things I can get done, but it's not much fun thinking in such terms just as you're beginning to hope your brief respite might last a little longer.
One thing I also realized is that I do not know if I have the inner strength and courage to chronicle my own illness here in my blog. During the course of my sisters battles it helped me to express myself here and it has helped me in my grieving process to be able to go back and reread what I recorded as we lived our lives and our relationship as sisters during that entire time. I just don't know if I can manage the same thing if it should turn out to be me who is doing the battling and dying, should that turn out to be the case. It is not what I am anticipating so much right now but, as I mentioned before, facing your own mortality is not something done in the most cheerful and positive frame of mind.
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