The breast is yet to come

Boobs. Knockers. Gazungas. Ta-tas. Call 'em what you like. They are arguably the most distinctive external feature of the female body. Despite the fact men would like to believe they were put on earth for their amusement, more likely the breasts were put here to annoy women. Whether its pre-menstrual tenderness, self-perceived image on their too-small/too-big-ness, breast cancer, lactation, or ham-handed teengage groping, the breasts suffer for their existence. Like Rodney Dangerfield, breasts have a hard time getting the respect they deserve.

So several months ago, upon performing my monthly groping of myself, i found what every woman has been programmed to fear--a breast lump. Eek! I says to myself. Did i somehow accidentally inhale a kidney bean? Well my next decision was to employ the pattented Lady Head Coping With Scary Health Issues Approach--i ignored it in the hopes that it would go away. So ignore it i did until the next month's scheduled groping when i noticed it was getting smaller. Yippee!!!! Ignoring it DOES work! A month of happiness goes by, only to be shattered by my realization that it had reared its ugly head again, and this time, it was much bigger. Oh fuck, i says. The kidney bean is at it again. So i get thee to the doctor for a routine visit, mentioning that there may be a lump in there, it may be getting bigger, and hoping that maybe, just maybe he wont find anything. Poking. Prodding. A lot of "ahems, hmms, and yikes." Suddenly i find myself with a referral to have an ultrasound done on my ta-tas at the Breast Center of my hospital. Days later, i find that the "Breast Center" is an affiliate of the CANCER CENTER. WHAT THE FUCK? How come i have to go to the Breast Center that is affiliated with the Cancer center? What about the Non-Cancer Breast Center that apparently only exists in my mind.

Two weeks i have to wait for my appointment to see if my ta is gonna kill me. And of course, every magazine i read or show i watch or news i check has some article or episode on breast cancer and how its ultimately gonna kill me, strip me of my ta, or worst of all, make me go through chemotherapy. Then i begin to realize that as women, we are really, really over-inundated with breast cancer information. Statistically, 80% of all breast lumps are BENIGN--that is, they are not cancer. Therefore, why does every article on breast lumps immediately sentence women to hell-fire and damnation? I know breast cancer awareness is hugely important, and real women do get it and i know several who have and its a fucking prick of a disease, but are we going a little overboard by PETRIFYING women every time they inhale a kidney bean? In the longest two weeks of my life, i was convinced i had cancer, was gonna either die or lose my gorgeous eyebrows (who cares about the hair) or have my ta removed, which after many years of having tense relations with them due to their small size, i had finally come to terms with and learned to love those small but sassy freaks.

Because of all this media, and the fact my doctor examined the lump and thought enough of it to send me to the freaking Breast Center (lets not forget that it happens to be affiliated with the Cancer Center), i am silently stressing out about this until the day of the ultrasound. So i get to the cancerous Breast Center. First of all, i am the youngest person there by several orders of magnitude. I'm still ready to crap my pants at any moment. But interestingly, this is no ordinary clinic. Its all pimped out. Apparently they realize anyone that comes there is traumatized, so they are super sweet, give you these big, warm fluffy white robes instead of hospital gowns and have all these cushy waiting areas and all the rooms are painted nice warm colors and everything smell like flowers. The nurse cops a preliminary feel. "Is that all? That squishy little thing? Moves around quite a bit. Has fluctuated in size." All good signs. The urge to wet my pants is slightly abating. The doctor comes in, all friendly. Not wearing a lab coat, but this tremendously smart brown and blue houndstooth suit. I suddenly become distracted by the awesomeness of her suit. And she smells like happiness. She warms up the ultrasound and whisks it across my ta. "I dont see anything, hon. There's nothing in there. Its a perfectly normal breast. The tissue is just lumpy there, but its perfectly normal." No Cheetos stuck in there, not even a kidney bean. Basically, an air bubble, or a few pieces of breast tissue that were not happy being Bs and were trying to become double Ds. This glorious women in the incredible suit has told me my ta-tas are fine. Abort plan to wet pants.

As i laughed and skipped my way back from the Breast Center, i thought to myself that many women in that position are not so lucky, and the lump turns out to be bad, bad stuff. BUT the vast majority of women ARE laughing and skipping away from these kinds of tests. So while we desperately need to pray for and support the women that suffer the worst for their most prominent female feature, I also feel like it would do women good if we took some stigma away from the insidious breast "lump." The lesson here is to get thee ta-tas to the doctor, but don't mentally masectomize yourself just because you inhale a kidney bean.