A few weeks before I turned 50, I received a phone call from my HMO congratulating me on my upcoming birthday. I was a shocked: I’m always the one trying to get in touch with them, waiting on hold endlessly, being transferred to the wrong extension or department, and eventually being disconnected only to start the process all over again.
My dismay continued as the chirpy woman from the HMO wished me good health. I laughed and thanked her. I was ready to end the conversation. That would make a good story. But as I was about to hang up, she invited me to come in for a mammogram.
I sat down hard and fumbled for my diary. I had been meaning to make an appointment. It had been such an emotional year. I was going to do this and a long list of other things after my birthday. There happened to be a 10 AM appointment on my 50th birthdy that I politely declined. Partly out of cowardice and partly because, for the first time in two decades, I was doing exactly what I wanted on my birthday and a mammogram just wasn’t on the list. I speak with clients all the time who grapple with their age. This year, I was going to celebrate mine!
I was having a girls spa day with seven of my female friends. But if I pushed the appointment off for two weeks, I would have enough time to torture myself and completely obsess about the test.
This wasn’t my first mammogram. I had had a mammogram once or twice around my fortieth birthday. But that was before. Before my mother died of cancer, before friends’ mothers had died of cancer, and before friends had died of cancer. When my children were babies and I was still someone’s wife, I had a benign brain tumor removed.
Now, everything was different. I felt it every day. And it was everywhere.
People at parties spoke about recent colonoscopies, high cholesterol, and physical therapists. Not books they’ve read or places they had visited and restaurants that must be tried. If this was getting older, I didn’t want any part of it. Not the talk, not the tests, and certainly not the results. Come join a coaching session and we’ll cover it there.
And what if I did have cancer? Who would want me then? How would I begin dating at 50, bald with a bad wig and yellow skin? Or worse yet, what if ended up with one breast or none? Or if I became a swollen old woman from chemo and steroids? My married life was over. How was I going to start dating with cancer?
Still I knew enough to know that early detection saves lives. I could be the eighth of nine who didn’t have breast cancer in my lifetime. A dear friend of mine had her own post-fifty mammogram a year ago and the results were positive for cancer. She had surgery almost immediately, had a breast removed, only took a couple days off, and kept working. She didn’t tell very many people, and on the anniversary of her diagnosis, she started an emergency relief fund for other women diagnosed with breast cancer.
I was working on my own loss this year: the loss of a 17-year marriage and the breakup of a family. After the separation, I felt like a part of me had been removed. I still spoke in plural and realized the stories I told were about something we, my former husband and I, had done or seen together. And there were fewer invitations. Some people were more curious than consoling and I realized that my social circle was almost entirely married people.
My friend S. and I had long talks about our conditions. We were very supportive. She appreciated my gallows humor and invited me to holidays and dinners when my children were not with me. We reviewed her constant doctor visits, the weekly scans and blood tests, and what procedure to choose for her replacement breast.
I cataloged fix up lines and all my new friends on Facebook. I drove her to appointments when her husband couldn’t be with her. The offices and wards were cheerfully stifling. Some of the women looked healthy. Others painfully thin and drawn with headscarves and caps pulled over their ears. Some had moon faces bloated from medication. People spoke in murmurs. The only laughter was ours. And there was never quite enough air.
And I was uncomfortable with my own good health. Taking it for granted. I bargained with G-d that I would start working out. Stop eating fried foods. Give more to charity and be more patient with my kids if only I could miss this bullet. I was divorced in a sea of married people. And I was treading water pretty well.
But a cancer diagnosis without the support of a spouse was something I couldn’t handle. (Tweet it!)
After two weeks of sleepless nights, the morning dawned. I took my teenage daughter with me, and as we sat in the waiting room she was bored and antsy. The constant chime of her instant messaging rattling me further. I dismissed her after I filled out the paperwork. She didn’t understand what the big deal was and I didn’t want to burden her. I sat in the waiting area with eight other women who all had the same appointment time as I did. We were all nervous. We were all alone and waiting together. Somehow it was comforting. We wished each other good luck as if we were old friends.
One by one each woman’s name was called and they filed in with their paperwork. As our numbers decreased, we shifted to the chairs closer to the door. The testing room was freezing and dark. I posed for the pictures of my smashed breasts, then returned to the waiting room to wait for the ultrasound.
I started to think about my life. How difficult and exhilarating the last year had been. Doing things alone, the way I wanted to, for the first time in two decades. How happy my kids were and how my ex and I had finally become friends. I thought about how lucky I was to have people in my life that cared about me. And how being me didn’t seem to be enough for the longest time, and now being me finally was enough. Cancer or not, I would find someone to love me just the way I was.
I was the last one in the waiting room. The woman doing my ultrasound couldn’t find my records. We tried my maiden name and married name. I explained that I had just divorced my husband but we still had a family policy. She located my record. We chatted about work, children, marriage, and divorce. As I was getting dressed she told me I was remarkable. And she wished she had as much courage as I did. I thanked her and handed her my divorce attorney’s card.