Breast Cancer, My Story

I started this blog earlier this year as a class assignment, an assignment that I didn’t want to do. Unlike those people on reality shows who will do anything for their 15 minutes of fame, I am a very shy and private person. But to pass the class I had to write this blog. Well, it turned out that graduated school was not for me, so I quit both the class and the blog and haven’t thought about either for some time. But now it is October and everywhere you look someone is doing a story about breast cancer, a disease that I am very familiar with.
While I was in treatment some of my friends told me that because I have such an odd way of looking at things, I should write a book about my cancer experience, so I did. Then I read up on how to get a book published. It was more work trying to find an agent and/or a publisher than to write the book. I was too shy to send out my manuscript to strangers. What if they hated it—or worst, what if they liked it-then what would I do? So, the manuscript sat in a drawer.
But with all the press and pink everywhere, I keep thinking about my story and that I really want to tell it. My blog seemed like the perfect way to tell my story. My working title is Jersey Girl-without her tomatoes. So here it goes-----chapter one-page one.


CHAPTER 1: ME GET A MAMMOGRAM?

AUGUST 2000
I pulled the car screeching in to the parking lot, late again. I started to think that maybe when I moved two years ago I should have changed to a new
Gynecologist, because this hour long drive every six months was getting tired. I found a parking spot and ran into the building then up a flight of stairs.
Half out of breath, I entered the office and approach the receptionist,
"Hi, I'm Traci and I have a 1:00 o'clock appointment with Dr. Munn." The receptionist glanced over her shoulder to the wall clock, which read 1:10
Then she looked back at me and said:
"Have a seat." I had just sat down when a nurse called me into an exam room. The nurse took the standard test: weight, blood, blood pressure etc…
"Hmmm, you're blood pressure is high, which is very unusual for you, have you participated in any strenuous activity recently?"
"You mean besides the-I'm late run through the parking lot/up the stair sprint?"
"Great." She said laughing "I want you to sit in the waiting room and calm down for ten minutes, so I can get an actuate read."
"Won't I mess up the doctor’s schedule?"
"Not really, she is running behind." I went back to the waiting room. The room was small for a two-doctor office. The furniture was standard, and the
walls were white and there were a few out dated magazines lying on a table. I have never liked this waiting room, the doors seemed to be in the wrong place
which made the room disorienting. Decorator I am not, my own house is decorated in early second hand, but I am sensitive to the feel a room projects and
I have made a game out of grading business offices and doctor's waiting rooms.
This one was small (-) the door placement is wrong (-) and the walls were white (--) but the furniture is nice (+) and practicable (+) and I liked the pictures
on the wall (+) so I gave it a C-.
There were two very pregnant women in the room chatting and laughing. They smiled at me when I entered the room and invited me to join them. I declined
And sat and as far away from them as I could, I opened my book and started to read. Within a few seconds I was transported to the 1950's Irish countryside
of a Mave Binchy novel. I could smell the open fields and hear the giggles of teenage girls running home from school not knowing that some of their innocence
was about to be shattered. The nurse opened the door and called the name of one of the women. She exited the room. I continued to read ignoring the remaining
woman. A few minutes later I got called.
I was at the doctors to have my bi-annual pelvic exam and pap smear. When the exam was done Dr. Munn told me get dressed and meet her in her office.
When I got there she was looking through my chart.
"I don't see a mammogram this year, when did you get it done?"
"Welllll, I didn't."
"Why not?" She asked.
"Because I've been busy." I answered, curtly. I hate mammograms, the thought of the whole process gave me the creeps.
"It is important that you get one, and soon." She said.
"Yea, yea, I'll get one…soon." She changed the subject and we talked about other health related issues.
"That's it, I'll see you in six months." She said, getting up from behind her desk.
"You haven't given me my prescription for my birth control pills yet." I reminded her.
"And I am not going to, either." She stated.
"WHAT!!! Why not?"
"You didn't get the mammogram that I asked you to get, that's why!" She explained that if I wanted to be her patient and I wanted birth control pills then I had
to have a exam twice a year and a mammogram once a year…no monogram-no birth control pills-no exceptions.
I really needed a new prescription (did I mention that I'm a procrastinator?). I told her that I had less than a week's worth of pills left. The funny thing was,
she thought that I wanted the pills to regulate my periods while in the pre-menopausal stage. I told her that I took the pill so I would not get pregnant. She started laughing, I mean really, really laughing. When she gained control of herself she said that she was sorry for laughing at me, but she found it funny that as a forty-four year old, I was worried about getting pregnant. She was treating women ten years younger than me for infertility. I reminded her that I had a six-year-old and it took me less than two months of trying to get pregnant.
We struck a deal, she gave me a month's supply of pills (they always have some demos lying around). If I have the mammogram in the next 30 days she will call a prescription to my pharmacy, if I don't, I am out of luck. I took the pills and stormed out of her office. I though to myself, how dare she be so mean to me. After all, I just drove over an hour to get here. I'm not going to get my breast squished. I'll just find a new gynecologist, I'll show her.
-