Again With The Insects?

I've been on 3 training walks so far and I've tripped along on the treadmill for several stray miles. The 3-Day is 3 months away and I have yet to get serious about blogging. Well, here I am and here's an update:

• We had a lot of rain last winter and the bank who bought our condo community graded the empty lot next door in hopes of selling it. In Arizona, dirt lots are the kiss of death to anyone w/ arachnophobia. They house every single creepy crawly critter you can imagine and when their dirt lot is stirred up, they migrate like a group of angry peasants directly to my house. Five scorpions showed up in the last month. The other day I received a notice from my HOA that there is a significant increase in black widow/scorpion sightings in my community. Thank you Wells Fargo. You rock.
• Lucky for me, the scorpions aren't the only despicable things out in force. During our last training walk, after trudging 3 miles through clouds of mosquitoes and gnats, high heat and sticky humidity, I had to crunch across a veritable carpet of dead bugs of unknown species to get to a public toilet. Definitely not one of the high points in my day.
• This morning as I got ready for work, the radio announcers bleated repeatedly that this weekend temperatures are going to hit 115 on both Saturday and Sunday. Just so happens I will be walking 10 miles on each day. Go me.
• Because this isn't our "first rodeo"and because it's so blasted hot, training walks are held every other weekend beginning at 5am and we walk longer distances than the training schedule calls for.

So that's the nutshell version of my whereabouts. Stand by for more as the walks get longer and the days get shorter....

And the Winner Is.....

A few days after my first mammogram, a letter arrived in the mail. Actually, not really a letter, more of a form. On the form were several check boxes used to indicate whether or not my images were sufficient for a conclusive reading and if that reading yielded positive results.

A single box was checked indicating that in my case, additional images were necessary. While manipulating my sweaty body parts, the technician had mentioned that I could very well get a callback as many first time mammograms often needed additional scans taken in order to develop a conclusive "baseline" reading.

Still smarting from the trauma of the first visit and being right on top of the holidays, I tossed the letter aside and vowed to get to it when I got to it. After all, the "suspicious findings" box hadn't been checked so why rush right back? I figured I'd just get Santa out of the way and then I'd go right in.

Christmas came and, I'm not going to lie, it involved way more cookies than the average human should be allowed to consume--especially if said human is a mere 5'2" and not at all interested in exercise. Gone were the woes and shameful thoughts of mammogram day when my gut protruded out over my jeans. Gone were the thoughts of all things healthy like 3-Day training walks and mammograms and doctors. It was a jolly time.

January rolled around and I made time for the follow up appointment. It had been two months since the form had arrived. The same technician met me in the waiting area and gave me my hearty little pink paper shirt. I have to admit, it was even more stunning with my post-Christmas binge figure. This being my second visit, I felt like an old mammogram pro so there was less breast squishing worry and more time to focus on my Alfred Hitchcock figure as I flipped through some ridiculous glamour magazine.

While I waited, the technician disappeared into another room to look at my scans and determine what she needed to do for this visit. After a few minutes, she was still in the adjoining room and had called another technician in to look at my scans. Moments later, she called me in.

"This is your right breast," she said, tapping a ghostlike image on the screen. "These," she tapped tiny white dots with her pen, "are what we need additional images of." Immediately, I started to sweat. "The person who reads the mammograms needs a close-up of this area so he can look at these." She tapped the image with her pen again. The cluster of small dots spun before me.

She led me into the imaging room and once again I was clamped into the evil jaws of the mammogram machine. This time, however, I wasn't distracted by the discomfort or the embarassment of my rotund figure. This time I was worried about a cluster of tiny white dots.

The next day, I received a phone call from my OBGYN office. "Your scans have been read and you have a suspicious cluster of calcifications in your right breast and you need a biopsy done immediately," said the pleasant lady on the other end of the line. I tried to imagine our roles reversed and having to deliver such heart stopping news to people over the phone. Neither side of the phone line had an easy time of it. After giving me information on surgeons and the urgency of the upcoming biopsy, the lady on the phone said, "Good luck with this. I hope everything turns out okay for you."

It was then that I realized the seriousness of the situation. I was scared before, yes, but something about her wishing me luck made me feel as if I was about to swan dive into the arms of fate.

My pre-op appointment with the surgeon was scheduled for a week out. During that week, I managed to travel to the end of the Internet and back Googling every single article and picture on breast microcalcifications. For my troubles I got everything from "it's going to be just fine" to "you're probably going to have to have a double mastectomy." My mind reeled with the myriad of possiblities that lay before me and the simple fact that I had no control over any of them. What was done was done and now all I could do was ride the wave.

Surgery day arrived and before sunup my fiancee drove me to an imaging center. After sheafs of paperwork, I was given a gown and my right breast was clamped into a mammogram machine for a good 10 minutes or so while a doctor injected the area with dye and placed several thin wires in my breast to indicate to the surgeon the area that would be removed. An assistant was charged with wrapping me in warm blankets and giving me tissues while I sat and cried.

Wires taped in place, I was returned to my fiance's care and we were directed to the hospital where the actual surgery would take place. Because of the location of my microcalcifications, the surgeon was unable to do a simple biopsy using just a needle. Instead, I had the pleasure of putting on a hospital gown and being wheeled into the ER where a (now blue) chunk of my right breast was removed.

One week later, during a follow up appointment, I was gifted with the results of my biopsy. In the procedure, it turns out the doctor had removed pre-cancerous cells. "If you had not had anything done, you would eventually have gotten cancer," he stated in that matter-of-fact-I-impart-this-kind-of-news-all-day-every-day kind of way. I sat in stunned silence. Pre-cancerous sells? I had no history of breast cancer in my family. How could this be? I didn't smoke, I rarely drink, the only thing I'm guilty of is consuming my weight in baked goods every Christmas. How could I possibly have the precursor to cancer?

With this knowledge in hand, I made my way back out into the world. Thankful that I did not have cancer and I was saved by getting my mammogram, I was suddenly so thankful that I am walking in this year's 3-Day that I could have cried. I got lucky this time but you just never know what life is going to toss at you...

Fisher Price's My First Mammogram

It was time to put my money where my mouth is. After six months of training, fundraising and raising awareness about breast cancer, I had yet to have my first mammogram. Finally, just after my 40th birthday my mammogram date arrived.

I went to the appointment devoid of all lotions, perfumes and deodorants. At that moment, the mammogram wasn't as big a worry as how in the heck I was going to get through the nervous stress sweats the procedure was sure to cause without being shrouded in a cloud of stink lines. Oh yeah, this was sure to be a great time.

I reassured myself with the insane reasoning that while this was going to be unpleasant and uncomfortable it was far better than a gynecological exam. Any opportunity to keep my pants on in public is a good opportunity and should be noted as such. Note that when the only good point you can come up with about a particular event is that it doesn't involve showing someone your cervix, you are probably in for a bad time.

Because I'm new at this and naive, I expected the office to be a "mammogram" office so I was surprised when I walked in to a waiting room bursting with a very co-ed, mixed age crowd. Many paitents were elderly and this must be the norm because the receptionist spoke in a very loud, slow voice. (Translation for those under the age of 70: she shouted at me like I was thick or from a foreign country.) In addition to having a voice like a bat, she was startlingly young. Young enough to have very well been wearing a Girl Scout uniform under her perky, smiley face decorated scrubs.

"WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU TODAY, HUN?"

Um, Hun? Seriously? I leaned over the desk and said in sotto voice: "I'm here for a mammogram?" followed by a raised eyebrow and knowing eyeroll for effect.

Securing a flower-adorned pen to a clip board holding a sheaf of paperwork and slid it across the desk at me. "JUST FILL THIS OUT AND SOMEONE WILL COME RIGHT OUT AND CALL YOUR NAME, SWEETHEART. NOW GO SIT OVER THERE AND FILL IT OUT." Kindly leaving off "like a good girl." Sheesh.

I get halfway through the waiting area before I hear, "IS THIS YOUR FIRST MAMMOGRAM, HONEY?" Are you kidding me right now? I turn and nod, as if not speaking is going to somehow make the conversation suddenly private. Satisfied with my response, the receptionist goes to work on her computer.

I walk through the waiting area, desperate to hide the top sheet on the clipboard. The bottom half of it has several diagrams of breasts on it. Suddenly, I am the most modest person I know. Yes, I am the same person who has spent a year and a half shouting about boobs and mammograms to anyone who will listen. Somehow, now that I'm on the receiving end of things, it doesn't seem like such a fabulous event.

Finally, it's time for the fun to begin. Sporting a trendy paper shirt (open in the front) and my jeans proudly displaying my unexercised midsection, I stand before a fairly harmless looking machine. It's much smaller than I imagined and the flat paddles look harmless enough. As we've learned time and time again: looks can be deceiving.

There was a bit of manhandling by the technician (mammogram-ologist?) just before she pushed a magic button somewhere and and suddenly my right breast was sandwiched between two flat plates. The upper plate was clear and I made the unfortunate decision to watch as my breast spread like Silly Putty under the pressure of the wicked machine. The pain was fairly intense and I was sweating so much my hair was starting to frizz. Just when I thought things couldn't get any flatter, the machine spits out one final whirr and I hear a "fppppt" noise as a tiny bit of air escapes from some micro thin pocket of space between my compressed skin and the plastic plates. That's it lady, that's all I've got to give. She disappears behind a podium and there is a series of beeps and clicks as the images of my now sandwich bag shaped/sized breast are captured.

As I stood waiting for the machine to unleash me, the technician had to remind me to breathe. I gulped in a chest full of air and looked down again through the clear paddle, this time at my untrim abs. The pain in my chest kept my brain from registering the serious bubble gut before me. Who would have thought that there would ever come a time whenI would stand topless in a room with a stranger and the very last thing on my mind would be the fact that my gut was poking out over the top of my jeans? Seriously?

Finally, after what felt like several days, the machine released me. In a split second, I yanked myself free and was busily closing up my paper shirt and mentally preparing myself for side two.

False alarm. That was a "break" not the end of side one as I had hoped. No, as it turns out taking a picture of a flattened piece of flab held in a vice grip takes time...and several good college tries.

I'm squeezed from top to bottom and side to side. Time stops and the technician comes over occasionally to maneuver my reddened flesh into a new flapjack-esque shape. Each time she approaches me she comments, "wow, you are sweating a lot." Yes, I am sweating a lot. I am also out of shape, topless and standing in a room with a stranger while a machine manhandles my boobs. How about fewer obvious comments and more mammogram taking, hmmm?

Finally, my first mammogram was behind me. The front of me was flaming red and my ego was bruised. I didn't know the results of the mammogram yet but I knew that I was in dire need of some deodorant and a serious ab routine.

This One's for You

Yes, you heard it right. I am back for round 2 of the Breast Cancer 3 day in November 2010. It all sounds so fun and cheerful right now--so do-able and nifty. But what will it be like at the end of August when I have walked about 100 miles in scorching heat, sweat-sodden underpants and the company of millions of insects? One can only guess.

Didn't I get enough the first time? Yes, yes I did thank you very much. I would be quite fine for the remainder of my time walking this earth if I never had to use another port-a-potty, suffer the humiliation of red-which-clashes-with-pink clown shoes, or sleep in a God-forsaken tent (pink or otherwise). Life without random running beetles, public restrooms and the humiliation of exercise classes would be good. But life without cancer would also be good.

So while I have whined and moaned and suffered through one 3-day, a year off has allowed me to rest up and renew my courage, strength and purpose in this mission. On Black Friday I began officially begging for money. In June I dust off my clown shoes and start walking for all of us who may contract cancer, all of you who are fightning it and everyone who has lost the battle. I walk for cancer of all types because if we can cure one, the cure for the others can't be far behind.

Welcome back to the journey.