Day of reckoning

So when we were both up and getting ready to face the day and he said, “Honey, I think you have a lump in your right breast. I felt it last night.”

 Just like that my whole world changed. Forever and irrevocably, my everything was changed by those (oh, hang on a second, have to count them, ok 15, the count is 15)  15 words. For a split second I just stood there and breathed and then I quickly told him that it must be my glands. They swell and recede like the tides with my cycle and because I am not overly endowed it's pretty noticeable. Somewhere deep inside though, I knew differently. He accepted my hopeful explanation, kissed me goodbye, and left for work. I took a shower, felt around half-heartedly and haphazardly, found the lump, told myself "that of course it’s glands" and got on with my day.

 I have absolutely no idea what I did that day, or the next or even the next for that matter. I can tell you that I kept checking... and that lump went nowhere. It stuck around like the old acquaintance from college that just comes to stay "for a couple of weeks till they get on their feet” and then doesn’t leave. They stay for a long time. Until you ask for some money. Then they find some other softhearted idiot to leach off of and go away muttering indignantly.

 A couple of weeks of this and even an ostrich would have known that it was indeed a lump that was indeed going nowhere. No matter how many times I checked, the damn thing was still there. I actually talked to myself out loud in the shower. “You have to face this. This is real. You have to do something about this, you big coward.”

 I have always talked to myself. Even as a child I would walk into a room and then have no idea what I went in there to do/get/see. Alzheimer's, if I should develop it, will be familiar ground, I tell you. So I learned to "speak the mission out loud" to have a better shot at remembering it. I regarded people that had the same pencil in school for two days running with awe. I could barely keep track of me, never mind possessions. I discussed this habit of talking to myself with myself and concluded after a spirited debate the following:  Talking to myself is ok. Even arguing with myself is ok - unless I lose the argument. If I can't even convince me of my point of view, well then there is no hope for me. 

 I gave myself two days to “deal” and got on the phone looking for help and answers. I told no one. I did not cry.

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