The body is an amazing thing! Love yours, or hate yours, it doesn’t change the complexity of it.
Recently I had a little potential health scare. I went for my annual 3D mammogram and a week later received a report in my patient portal telling me that nodules were found in both breasts and that further testing and ultrasounds were recommended. I panicked! A lot! My mom had breast cancer. I googled some of the verbiage in the report (don’t ever do that!) and was even more confused. The day I received the report, I’d been at my doctor for my annual physical and bloodwork too, but before receiving the report.
I called my doctor who didn’t really give me any reassurance, partly because she’s not a mind reader and can’t give me feedback without seeing the report herself and obviously she’s not going to give me false hope. She just said, “go back and get the ultrasounds and tests”. So, I called to make the appointment and could only get in 4 days later. 4. LONG. DAYS. LATER!
In the meantime, no matter what I did to try to take my mind off it my brain had total control of my body. My heart rate shot up, my blood pressure shot up, I developed stomach issues, joint aches, exhaustion, shakes, lack of sleep, total mental breakdown, emotional breakdown and I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I did everything I knew to keep myself busy and quieten my mind, but my mind was having none of it.
I talked to several women about it and came to realize that many women get called back to have further testing done and each of them said that it turned out to be nothing. All I could think about was “what if its NOT nothing…?” I had no idea so many women experienced this too.
I don’t want to make light of this because I know several women who are either currently going through horrible treatment or have just finished the treatment and I’d just experienced a tiny taste of what they experienced. I’m so sorry and I pray for their total and complete healing and restoration in every area of their lives.
In the middle of this 4 day wait it was my birthday too! The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to celebrate it in any shape or form, but I sucked it up and tried to enjoy myself. Lots of bad things typically happen around my birthday: weather phenomena such as hurricanes (yes we evacuated for 2 of them around my birthdays), driving through a tropical storm in treacherous conditions to get to a wedding, illnesses/Covid, deaths, funerals etc., so being super positive wasn’t high on my list.
So, 4 days later, feeling like I had developed an ulcer, (!) a friend took me to the imaging center and came with me while I had the tests done. The mammographer and ultrasound technicians were wonderful and put me at ease and got right to the testing and sent it to the radiographer for the results and we waited for them. Turns out I have several small benign cysts that they will monitor from now on and all was fine. It took everything inside me not to burst into tears of relief.
By the time we’d walked out of the facility absolutely everything in my body that had fought against me for 4 days, immediately disappeared and returned to normal. How fascinating is the body!!! I was very much aware of it and totally focused on what was going on. I took my friend out for lunch to thank her for being there with me. I didn’t realize how much I DID need someone to be with me until it was over. I’m so used to doing everything on my own, so it was nice to have someone to share it with. That night I went to bed early and slept solidly for 10 hours! I haven’t slept that long in maybe a decade!
Oh, and just so that you know, my blood results came back good too (I was freaking out about those too).
Now to seriously learn how to relax, meditate and calm down. I’m open to suggestions on how to do that!