Here’s the thing: we’re all busy. It’s so easy to get into
the groove of waking up in the cold and dark of early morning, hitting the
ground running, and not stopping until you crash late in the night, way past
the time when you said you’d put yourself to bed so that you’d be more rested
tomorrow when you do it all over again. I was in that same grind. It wasn’t
even a bad place to be, it was just life. And then life took a left turn I
didn’t see coming.
It started out innocently enough. A week after my first
unremarkable mammogram I got a letter saying they needed some extra scans. No
big deal, right? I mean, the same thing happened to my sister, and after the
additional scans, all was well. So I went in for my extra images of my right
breast with my book in hand and chalked it up to an inconvenience that I was
going to make the best of by catching up on some reading. As the tech crammed
me into the mammogram machine we joked about our kids, the book I was reading,
the coldness of the paddles in the machine. She took two quick pictures and had
me dress and head back out to the waiting room. Minutes later I was called back
in for another couple of images. The tech had me stay in the gown while the
radiologist looked those scans over to make sure she had what she needed. When
I was called back in for yet a third round of images, I knew something wasn’t
right.
The chit-chat had stopped. The laughing had stopped. The
tech took image after image and spoke to me in a calming voice that just made
me more nervous. Calcification is normal, she assured me. It was my first
mammogram. They were just getting an accurate baseline for my body, to compare to
all future mammograms.
After the three rounds of scans I met with a very nice
radiologist who explained that I had a cluster of calcifications she wanted to
check again in six months, to make sure they weren’t anything to worry about.
Both the friendly radiologist and my great regular doctor reassured me that all
was well and I should put it out of my mind for the next six months. Which I
mostly did.
I went in for my six-month follow-up certain that all was
well and I’d be sent home after a few quick images. That didn’t happen.
Instead, the same very kind radiologist sat me down in a stuffy overlit private
waiting room and told me she still wasn’t sure what she was seeing, and that
she’d like to do a biopsy. There really isn’t any way to hear that word without
taking it to the worst-case-scenario of cancer, but I put on a brave face and
told her I wanted the next available appointment. I wanted it over. I wanted a
definitive answer as soon as possible. I made my appointment that day, and
spent the next week waiting in a stress-hazed fog.
I told my immediate family and a couple of friends, but
mostly just went through the motions of normal everyday life swinging between
hope and fear for the next seven days. I slept fitfully at night and was
exhausted all day. I meditated. I watched a lot of comedies. I cried and
laughed and apologized to my kids for being spacy and cranky.
The day before my biopsy I had a powerful and emotional
Reiki session with my amazing friend Heather. “This is a wake-up call,” Heather
told me. “It’s time to stop putting everyone else first. Get in the driver’s
seat of your own life. Be the powerhouse that you are.” This wasn’t new
material. We’d covered the same issues in previous sessions. I’m a caretaker.
I’ve had therapists, psychics, doctors, and healers all praise and criticize me
for this natural tendency of mine. What I need is balance. What I need is
permission from myself to just be myself, all the time. I need to learn how to
put myself first even when the demands and needs of those around me are
hammering down on me. Well, especially then. The difference with this
particular Reiki session is that I got it. My body is not taking no for an
answer. I love everyone around me and I want them all happy and whole and
supported. But it’s not my job to keep them that way. My job is to take care of
me, first and foremost.
I went to my biopsy with my boyfriend and my mother at my
side, left them in the waiting room and made my way down the hall to meet my
fate. During the long and uncomfortable procedure—lying face-down in an awkward
position unable to move for a good forty minutes—I pulled out every positive
visual I had in my mind. The Reiki session definitely helped: I was perfectly
calm, even when they told me I was bleeding more than usual, and would need
lots of compression and possibly a trip down to surgery for some stitches
afterward. The biopsy itself was painless—I was numb and the team taking care
of me was wonderful. The bleeding was an issue, and after the biopsy was over I
spent another hour sitting with a nurse’s hand smashing my breast trying to get
it to stop bleeding. Eventually my body responded and I was sent home,
exhausted and sore but glad it was over. That was on a Friday afternoon. My
results were expected on Monday afternoon.
I spent the weekend resting and visiting with family, trying
to find a balance between being alone enough to rest, but not enough to let my
imagination take off running down the dark alleys of my mind. Monday came, and
with it the usual grind: waking sleepy kids, brushing their hair while they ate
breakfast, rushing them out the door and into their classrooms in the pouring
rain. I came home, changed out of my wet clothes, and spent four hours revising
my latest novel. I want to start sending it out to agents by the end of the
month, ahead of the holiday rush. It was a good distraction, immersing myself in
a world of my own creation, with characters that have come to feel as real to
me as anyone.
I called my doctor just before heading out to pick up my
kids from school, but she didn’t have my results yet. Her office would be
closing soon and I resigned myself to another restless night of waiting. I met
my girls at their classrooms, chatted with some of the moms on the playground
after school, and as I was leading the way to the parking lot with my kids in
tow, my phone rang. It was the radiologist. I can’t recall our exact
conversation, but the words “normal” and “no further treatment needed” were all
I needed to hear. We were on our way to a dentist appointment for the kids, and
they were excited and antsy to get there (Strange? Do your kids get so excited
about trips to the dentist?) and I drove there in a lighter, brighter fog. I
didn’t have time to sit and process until later that afternoon. It was over. I
was fine. The biopsy was negative. I’ve never been so happy to fail a test in
my entire life.
Wake up calls are terrifying things. We are never prepared
for them. We don’t see them coming, and can’t see our way through them when
they come. In the midst of them we lose all sense of control, and that is an
awful feeling. But sometimes, they are exactly what we need.
I have a long to-do list in this life. I’ve known who I was
and what I’m meant to do here from a very young age. I have a strong work ethic
and can be very focused. But I also have a tendency to get pulled away from my
various missions by trying to keep everyone around me happy and healthy and
calm and focused. I stuff my own emotions to avoid making additional waves. I
want to be everyone’s rock. I have a habit of ignoring my own wants and needs
as I struggle to maintain a calm environment for everyone else’s benefit. No
one gave me this job, I just took it on as a child and have been doing it ever
since. And this wake up call has let me know that it no longer suits me.
While I can’t say that I’ll stop caring about the people who
matter to me, I can say that I won’t be putting them first anymore, not at my
own expense. I have books to write and kids to raise and exotic locations to
see and many more amazing people to meet. And I need to take care of myself in
order to make all of that happen. We never know what tomorrow will bring, what
challenges will arise. So it’s better to get to that to-do list today. Not the
one that other people put on you, but the one you made up for yourself long
ago. Dust it off and get to work.
