The Breast Whisperer (Suzanne Forster)

I had a brush with death last week. No, really, truly, I got a glimpse of my own mortality—and that was all it took for me to realize that I wasn’t ready to part ways with good old terra firma any time soon. I love this crazy planet and all the wonderfully crazy people on it. I didn’t know that before, not for a certainty, but I do now. I don’t want to die just yet, and I don’t want to go through a protracted illness, if I can help it. I have so much to live for, so much I want to do, although I’m still not quite sure what all of it is, but I want to find out and I want to do it, darn it, and now it looks like I’m going have my chance . . . thanks to the Breast Whisperer.

Last Wednesday morning, as I was getting ready to go to a hair appointment, I discovered a lump in my breast. A really large lump. Large and SCARY. I didn’t think lumps came that big, and I went into instant shock. I had just put on a stretchy camisole top in place of a bra, and I noticed an odd bulge below the nipple on my left breast. Sorry to have to get anatomical, but brushes with death often are anatomical, so it really can’t be helped, and it might even be useful information should you find yourself in this predicament, which I hope never happens!

Anyway, I thought the bulge was a wrinkle in the camisole’s shelf bra, but a quick attempt to smooth it out told me I was wrong—and filled my heart with horror. The room went pale and I reached for the bathroom counter to steady myself. I don’t remember how long it was before I took a breath, but I can still hear the sound of that gasp. Maybe it was a good thing that I had a very busy day ahead of me that started with a hair appointment (two inches of regrowth!) and included a long list of errands to be done on my way home, and then, in the early evening, a special support group meeting for people who’ve lost loved ones.

Wednesday was a day of shock and denial. I went through the motions, doing everything on my list, saying all the right things to people and acting as if nothing was wrong, although Joyce, my good friend and hair stylist, did ask if I was okay. She saw my unsteadiness as I made my way to her chair. I really couldn’t connect with anything very well, even the floor beneath my feet, but I told her I was fine, just getting over a bad bout of bronchitis, which was true. I couldn’t tell her about the lump. I couldn’t even tell myself about it. Maybe by the time I got home, it would be gone. That kept me going throughout the day.

Of course, it wasn’t gone. That night I looked up breast lumps on the internet and learned it wasn’t likely to be a cyst because I’m over forty and beyond the wild hormonal fluctuations of the birth control years. I did have fibrocystic breasts in those days, so I’d thought (hoped!) it might be a simple cyst. I told myself I would call the doctor first thing in the morning. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well that night, and the next day as I gave the doctor’s receptionist my reason for needing an appointment, I could already feel my spirits—and hopes—sinking.

They made me an immediate appointment, which only frightened me more. The examination was quick and thorough, and let me just say that women doctors are not afraid of inflicting pain. She didn’t mention the Cword. No one did. She also ruled out a cyst, but thought it might be an abscess. Okay, could be worse, I told myself. But that night I looked up breast abscesses and realized it probably wasn’t one. The lump was hard and sore, but it wasn’t hot or inflamed. It was cool to the touch. And huge, roughly the size of a golf ball.

The more information I found the more my options narrowed, and at that point, it seemed I had no good ones left.

The next day I got myself to the Breast Center at a nearby hospital. My doctor had ordered an ultrasound, reasoning that a mammogram would be very painful with a lump that large. She also said an ultrasound would be sufficient to diagnose an abscess. The Breast Center staff didn’t agree with her. Three different women called me to the desk to inform me that I had to have a mammogram. I refused all three times. Can you spell denial? My doctor said it was an abscess, I explained, going into all the reasons we could skip the jaws of death. My real reason was abject fear that the abscess would break and spread pus and poison throughout my body. If I was lucky enough that it was an abscess.

The women got reinforcements. I don’t know who they all were, but they swore everything would be fine, that my doctor would be called and permission would be obtained. I’m pretty sure they lied. At any rate, eventually my name was called and I was led down a hall to a changing booth, where I was given a robe and told to undress from the waist up. Am I having a mammogram? I asked. But my doctor said— And I went through the entire routine again.

That’s when Susan Lipton, the radiology tech, appeared. No doubt she’s the one they always summon for difficult patients. Susan has a pixie smile to go with her red cap of hair, a great laugh and a line of reassuring patter. Plus, her voice and manner are imbued with enough soothing authority to calm the most skittish of wild creatures. Namely, me. Am I having a mammogram? I asked. It was becoming my mantra.

You are, she said. You most definitely are, but I haven’t lost anyone yet, and I won’t lose you. I have this golf ball in my breast, I told her. It could break. There could be seepage, poison. She waved off my fears. I’m going to make you a promise, she said. I won’t break anything, and I won’t hurt you. And she didn’t. Much.

Susan is a virtuoso radiology tech. She’s also an amazing spirit, one of those people who soothes just by her presence. Even my memory of her soothes me, easing fears that could have haunted me. I had a terrible foreboding about the diagnosis, and still somehow, she made the ordeal bearable. At some point during that ordeal, I realized who and what she was, a breast whisperer.

Susan also has a poker face. I watched her expression all through the procedures (which, including the paperwork, took hours), looking for clues as to what she saw on the various screens, but not a one. Is it an abscess? I wanted to ask her, but I was afraid, and I knew she wouldn’t tell me until the doctor had seen the films. As she left the room, she told me to wait there on the table and relax. If everything was okay, she would be back to tell me to get dressed, and I could go. If there were any problems, the doctor would come back to talk to me.

Forgive the cliché, but it was the longest eighteen minutes of my life. And then the door opened and the doctor came in. Of course, I assumed the worst. In the seconds it took him to get to my side, I imagined that I was beyond help, that a lump that large would certainly have spread the cancer to the rest of my body. Would I even be a candidate for chemo? Was it too late?

The examining room turned into a slow-motion movie scene. I started to get off the table, but Susan appeared out of nowhere to hold me down. I hadn’t seen her come through the door. I hadn’t seen anything but the doctor who was torturing me by running in place. Just give me the terrible news!

“Good news,” he said. “It’s a cyst.” His nonchalance bowled me over. I said nothing, did nothing, just stared at him like he was a lunatic. How could it be a cyst when everyone had said it couldn’t? I’d ruled out a cyst on Wednesday. This was Friday. Late Friday. Nearly five o’clock. He stuck to his story. Not only was it a cyst, but he wanted to aspirate it immediately, with my permission. That’s when I learned I wasn’t out of the woods yet. It would depend on the color and consistency of the fluid.

“Yellow fluid, perfectly normal,” he said a short time later. Of course, he’d poked and probed my tender flesh with a wicked huge needle first. But have sweeter words ever been spoken? Rarely in my lifetime. Will you marry me? and it’s a boy were pretty darn sweet. I’d like to buy your book was crazy sweet. But this was life and death. And I was alive.

Suz