September 8th 2017. A Friday.
I had a ton of emails to catchup on, and I was massively behind. I’d finished my calls for the day, and my goal for the afternoon was to just plough through what I could and make the “to do” list more manageable for the following week.
I’d chosen to work from Mum’s for the day, and had tucked myself into the kitchen; away from distractions of the living room TV. I just needed to focus. So I put my headphones on, and got ready to respond to client X, but stopped…because that’s when I felt it. A weird wave of sensation across the left side of my breast.
Like every other woman, just before your period, your boobs just feel tender; sensitive; maybe a bit sore even…but this…this just felt different. Before I could try to figure out whether I should ignore it or not, it happened again. The wave. This time starting from just near my armpit; right up to the left side of the nipple.
WTF!!!
Call it instinct, but I immediately checked my breast. Not that I really knew what I was looking for. In my head I started to think about what I’d read, what people had mentioned in passing on checking breasts, and all I could recall was searching for a lump. Ok, I guess I need to try to find a lump…where is this lump? My fingers were sweeping across my left breast, but nothing…no lump. Weird!
I started to compare the left to the right, to see if one was just like the other…and I just couldn’t find anything. I kept my fingers on my chest for a few seconds, and then my right fingers stopped just at the top of the left breast. It wasn’t a lump, but there was some type of firmness there. Hmmmm…has that always been there? Actually, does it feel that different to the right? I felt them again…I was confused. I really didn’t know if they were different. The sensation had stopped. I felt ok. My breasts actually felt quite similar. Why had I got myself worked up. I was fine…everything felt fine. It was probably nothing…probably just hormonal. Just a pre-menstrual thing. Blasted hormones.
I stopped the “search”, looked at my laptop…and simply chose to block it out. You see, I’m pretty good at that. Sticking my head in the sand, or finding other distractions when something comes up that I should probably address. I had work to do, emails to finish, dinner to make. I didn’t have time to deal with “this” right now. I’d deal with it later. It’s not as if my breasts were going anywhere, but my Friday afternoon was. I would deal with this later!!!
That was the Friday afternoon.
Friday 11pm I sent an email to the GP surgery to book an urgent appointment for a breast examination. I quickly realised, there were some things you could deal with later, but other things you’d actually want to deal with as soon as possible, even if it was 11pm.
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