Remembering my first ultrasound

I see my gynecologist today. Wonder what she'll say about my Tamoxifen woes. The three week period finally stopped. 

Funny because I'm not depressed. I'm jittery kind of like I've had too much coffee, which I've had to stop. Well, somewhat... I like my coffee but I try to reign it in. I don't want something that will just add more side-effects. I'll see what she says. I trust her opinion. 

I had some really upsetting news a few days ago. I grew up down the street from a family with three, very pretty sisters. They had a younger brother who was actually from their mom's second marriage. Turns out he's bought the family home. Our friends are neighbors so they were talking to him. 

Two are dead from BC. I was gutted. I knew the youngest best and she's still alive. This means that we've had three BC cases in our neighborhood, two brain cancers and my sister with her lymphoma. We're talking about two or three streets, maybe three square miles at most! Three cases of BC and only I'm alive... 

And there are rumors of another cancer death. I'm friends with his sister on FB and found her mom, whom I friended as well. I'm going to ask them....

Now that the treatment itself is over, I'm kind of mulling over the entire experience. I was thinking back to my first ultrasound when I was 20. Kind of hard to get my head around the fact that I've been dealing with this BC issue for three decades, yet, still escaped with breasts and hair intact. 

When I was 20, I (well, actually, my boyfriend at the time) found a lump. 

I freaked! I was sent in to have a mammogram and there, they saw I have dense, fibrous breasts. The cousin who at age 42 (I knew her parents but not her) counted as "family history". 

My mom was surprised. "She's only 20!" The doctor said yes, very unlikely to have it this young but he added, one of his patients was 24 at diagnosis. 

OMG, what did I have in store??

So because of the dense breasts, they explained that I needed an ultrasound. The lump did not look suspicious but I was told, this is probably not the last. I had had one before when I was Dx's with lactose intollerance. I thought it was cool, looking at all my organs. 

My mind was put at rest and I was glad I didn't need any other procedures. But I was unsure what I was facing. They didn't seem to committed to the risk I faced. Fibrocystic? Dense breasts? Probably made BC slightly more likely. Enough to inure that my insurance wil pay for periodic screenings this young. But did I really face the possibility? The jury was still out. 

The door opened and the tech's face lit up when she saw my mom, who accompanied me. It was the mother of a classmate. 

But the story really is that the classmate had an older sister, whom I knew just in passing. Jealous boyfriend. Murder/suicide in her home. She had come in to it. Unimaginable... I had been to her house, been in the room where later it happened...

So while I'm having the ultrasound, the mom was talking about these events with my mom. Obviously, not the time for questions (trust me, many more u/s's in the future when I could ask questions!) 

My heart broke for her and what she and her family had been through. My worries over this lump seemed petty and it kind of put it in perspective. 

I'll never forget, three decades later, she kept saying "You just can't ask 'why'. That can never be answered. You can drive yourself crazy with that question so just don't ask it..." Her words echoed in my head over the years, understanding at an age when I quite frankly, didn't have the maturity to really understand. 

When I was Dx'd, three decades and a continent away, in a foreign language, the first thought in my head was first, thank goodness me and not one of my kids.

Later, it was found to be one of the more curable forms and I didn't even have to go through chemo. After 3 decades of screenings, I was given the Fast Pass to the exit. After 3 decades of the Monster In the Closet, which I did a good job of ignoring, it turned out to be an easily clobbered lizard.  

And I didn't ask why. I at least owed that family, and that sister whose life was so short, as much!