What it’s like to find yourself with breast tumors in college

With my arm still resting behind my head, I watched as the liquid slime on my left breast was gently wiped away. There was not much to distract me from the sterile and oddly intimate act. The room was painted an inoffensive color somewhere between blue and grey. It was bare except for a lone wooden cross that hung on the wall. The Crucified Christ bowed his head sheepishly, avoiding my gaze.

Less than 24 hours before this, my gynecologist told me my breasts were dense. Dense was a word I was fairly certain was a synonym for heavy, but I had only heard it in the context of my high school physics class and from my mother talking about politicians she didn’t like. What it had to do with my breasts I really wasn’t quite sure, but here I was, getting an ultrasound of the density in question.

I struggled to decode the twitches on the nurse’s composed face as she analyzed the images of my soft tissue on a computer screen. Her eyes gave away nothing as they alternated narrowing and widening with each twist of the cold, metal instrument against my skin. She wasn’t like my mother, whose lips curled ever so slightly in the corner of her mouth when she pretended that she forgot to get me a birthday present. I found myself suddenly wishing very much that my mother was here as the nurse brought the doctor into the room.

“The lumps are not cysts like we were hoping…”

This is how his speech began. But wait―lumps? More than one? What’s going on? I was only able to pick up on a couple phrases after that.

“Abnormal growth”

“Three masses”

“Biopsy”

“We want to act fast”

I was still in a daze as I got dressed and the nurse walked me through some paperwork. “You’re cold!” She insisted, which was kind because we both knew my shaking was not the response to the room’s temperature.

“It could be a number of things;” she said, “breast cancer is just the worst of them.”

There it was. The nastier of the two c-words. It felt like I had heard that word thrown around my whole life, but now it was myself who had to picture it happening to myself. I started to cry.

Two days later, I went in for a biopsy. But this time it was at a bigger hospital, with a well-regarded doctor at one of the nation’s best programs.

The doctor kneaded my breasts methodically as if she was flattening dough. This time I looked at the colorful pamphlets of postmenopausal women holding hands and smiling at me with their closed mouth, dead-eyed smiles. This geriatric coven and their tasteless chunky jewelry encouraged me to ask my doctor about clinical trials.

I’M NOT ONE OF YOU! I wanted to scream at them. I thought to myself, "It can’t be. I’m only twenty years old, I eat my vegetables! I exercise! I don’t need clinical trials! This isn’t supposed to happen to me!"

I needed them to know this. But I didn’t say this. I didn’t say any of this.

Instead I waited in silence, hoping the doctor would come back and say, “Are you kidding?! You shouldn’t have even made it this far! You’re perfectly healthy! Go home!”

But instead she said that she didn’t want to wait for a biopsy because of their size. She wanted to remove the two larger masses and then test them and then go from there.

I could no longer pretend this wasn’t anything serious. I wanted to ask what “going from there” exactly entails, but I didn’t want to give those grandmothers with ill-advised perms on the pamphlet the satisfaction, those smug bitches.

I was also terrified. I wasn’t ready to hear the realities of being diagnosed. This was all happening so fast. Why hadn’t I noticed sooner? Would it even matter if I had?

I felt a guilt I couldn’t trace to reasoning,

Day of the surgery

When I woke up, I wasn’t really sure I was awake. Anesthesia will do that to a person. I touched my left breast, expecting to feel pain from where, moments ago, the surgeon sliced open and removed my flesh. But I felt nothing. Nothing isn’t the right word, I felt one feeling throughout my body, it was weightlessness. It was like I wasn’t tied to this earth and could float away at any moment. I made a mental note to ask my doctor about recreation anesthesia before giving in to it’s tide and falling back asleep.

I was awoken again by the cackles of the women next to me, who was absolutely astounded that she was not at work right now. The nurses exchanged amused glances as the repeatedly reminded the woman that she was recovering from surgery, not at work. A kind, older nurse brought me ice chips when she noticed my eyes were open. I asked her if I was this funny when I was coming out of the anesthesia. She looked at me tenderly. “No, sweetie. You just cried.”

The long wait for the results

Waiting was the worst part. I couldn’t focus on anything. For days on end, I stared at my phone and willed it to ring. I kept it on the highest volume at all times, just in case. More than once I hopped out of the shower at the sound of my phone, only to be disappointed by a CNN alert promising to surprise me with 17 facts about the supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park. (Did you know scientists believe the plume of rock extend as far as 1800 miles below the earth’s surface? The world is crazy.)

Well-intentioned relatives told me stories of their co-worker’s sisters who had gone through the exact same thing and it turned out to be nothing. It was all anecdotal evidence that reassured neither of us. I distanced myself from friends and made excuses about why I couldn’t see them. That gave me no peace, so I experimented with telling everyone.

“The procedure went well,” I told a classmate of mine during our lab. “Obviously we won’t know anything until the biopsy results come back, but they got the entirety of the two masses.”

“That’s nice,” she replied “Are you finished using my charger?”

I watched the homecoming game (or more accurately: the homecoming pregame) through 10 second increments on Snapchat as I stayed home and iced the incision site. The pain wasn’t unbearable, but there was a hollowed out feeling deep inside my ribcage that a pack of ice and prescription strength Tylenol did nothing to soothe.

The call came while I was at a fundraiser for breast cancer my sorority was holding. The irony of this is not lost on me. Do you want to know the craziest part? I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

My doctor called again when I was walking out. With no excuse to justify ignoring this call again to myself, I answered. I was so instantaneously hysterical at the sound of my doctor’s voice, tears started pouring out of my eyes and I could barely stammer out a greeting. This was all very amusing to the collection of people enjoying my free human spectacle through the Seven-Eleven window. A small child pointed at me and looked at her mother for an explanation.

My tumors were benign.

Although my tumors were not cancerous, the thought dawned on me that my results could have been different.

1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her life.

I think people, especially people my age, think about breast cancer as something you need to worry about, but not until later. However, just like a 401k or other things adults talk about ―there is no veil of youth protecting us.

Do not believe young women can not be diagnosed with breast cancer. The reality is, they actually do.

Nearly 80% of young women diagnosed with breast cancer find their breast abnormality themselves and approximately 70,000 men and women age 15 to 39 are diagnosed with cancer in the US, with breast cancer as the most common cancer for women in this age group

Sure there are risk factors, but disease doesn’t discriminate. Make an appointment with the Student Health Services Center at Temple, where they have gynecologists you can meet with on campus.

It’s so easy to book, you can do it online and in five minutes. The moral of the story is: don’t wait. You are your body’s only advocate, make sure you stand up for it.