this was not a lump. this wasn’t the reward of my careful checks. this was a tiny, almost imperceptible stain on the front of my t-shirt in the mornings. a few times. over months. small enough that you could potentially miss it - and definitely ignore it. so ignore it i did. convinced myself that i was imagining things, that it was nothing to worry about, even that the stain was from spilling a drip from my morning coffee.
then, two weeks after moving into a dreamy flat with my dreamy boyfriend - living the dreamy life - i woke up and my nipple had crusted over. yellowy and solid, and much harder to ignore. so i cried hysterically for 8 minutes, and then phoned the GP surgery. it was, i think, definitely in part thanks to me sobbing down the phone that i was given an appointment for that afternoon. i had continuous heart palpitations for the next few hours, and 2pm found me hyperventilating in the waiting room, as i prepared - obviously - to be told i was going to die.
i’ll do a separate post about having OCD while going through a health scare - but for now please allow me the facetiousness of talking about this with the certainty of death that i had at the time. i know that it’s irrational, and that it arguably trivialises a situation that - thankfully - i didn’t end up in. but my brain isn’t - and wasn’t - capable of being comforted by the knowledge that i was being irrational, that there was no point in worrying until i knew for sure there was something to worry about, that the chances were that i was going to be fine. none of that mattered. every single minute, of every day, from september 26th to november 29th, my brain - on a loop - screamed ‘you’re going to die, you’re going to die’. i was convinced of it, i was convinced that if i spoke about cancer in any capacity (like posting online about october's awareness month) that would mean i had it. these intrusive thoughts and magical thinking is textbook OCD behaviour and should be understood as such. i didn’t make a bigger deal of this than was needed through choice - my brain literally convinced me i was dying, so the terror and despair of those 3 months were, at least to me, real.
anyway, the GP had a feel and a squeeze and a press. nothing. no discharge when you tried to force it. no lumps. nothing in my armpits or collarbone or breast tissue. so she put it down to hormones and booked me in for a blood test in a couple of weeks. i shuffled home, unable to decide whether i was more worried that she hadn’t taken it more seriously or comforted that she didn’t think it was anything to worry about…
a couple of days later, i scooped my laptop up off the couch and headed through to my bedroom - trying, and ultimately miserably failing, to squeeze through the kitchen door without opening it fully. the corner of the laptop pushed into my boob and when the initial pain of the knock subsided after a few seconds, i became acutely aware that my chest was wet. i tentatively peeled off my usual 3-4 layers in the bathroom, and immediately burst into tears. my blood was not only bleeding. that wouldn’t be extra or ridiculous enough. my boob was oozing BLACK blood. like…jet black. what a spooky bitch.
unbelievably, i managed to calm down after a couple of hours and get back to whatever very important piece of trash i was watching on netflix that night, resolving to just phone the GP again on monday and ask for another appointment. over the weekend, however, i started spontaneously bleeding in various less-than-ideal situations - ikea, sainsbury’s, on the train, etc etc, and at this point the panic was too much. so i headed to out-of-hours because i literally couldn’t handle the psychological torture of just sitting at home. again, nothing happened when the doctor gave it a feel, until she got me to press down on it and i unexpectedly found the sweet spot - and literally projectile shot black blood at a high velocity towards her face. she audibly gasped, which is fair enough given the circumstances, but also did nothing to put my mind at ease. she referred me to the breast clinic and i went home to anxiously wait for my letter.
a week or so later i got it through. it was a month til my appointment. i got through those four weeks thanks mainly to my boyfriend, my unparalleled talent at avoidant behaviour, and being so panicked that my mind was, for the most part, just white noise. i have, as always, been completely unable to be succinct and to-the-point - so this will have to be ‘part 1’ of my boob chronicles. next time on my life is an endless series of dramas: a big long thing is stuck behind my nipple, and my most impressive bruise to date.
xoxoxoxoxox