The Lump in My Leg

I first felt it when I was pregnant with the little angel. I got scared, even though I know legs are often filled with random lumps that mean nothing, because my mother found lumps in her leg twice when I was just a little older than the little angel, and those lumps turned into years of fear, chemo, radiation, vomiting, pain and shuttling back and forth between friends and relatives.

I went to the dermatologist then. I was hugely pregnant. Because of its location on my thigh, the nurse told me to depants and sit on the chair. So I did, feeling vulnerable and exposed, for an hour and a half while I waited for someone to see me. When the doctor finally arrived, he poked at my leg, told me it was nothing and smirked at me. I started crying and insisted he take a baseline, which he did, but I never went back or called him again, because I was so mortified at the experience.

So then I tried to ignore it, because it's nothing.

This past winter, I was doing one of my aerobics DVDs when I had to do a weighted squat and tap my elbows on my thighs, and I happened to hit The Lump. And it HURT! I felt it and it was noticeably bigger than it had been before. 

For months, I would feel it in the shower. I noticed another one that kind of hurt near my knee, but it felt different. I worried.

Finally, over Easter, my family convinced me to go to my doctor with my laundry list of minor complaints. My gastro problems. My neck and back pain. And The Lump.

My doctor took them all seriously. She felt The Lump and sent me to get an ultrasound, where I saw The Lump. The ultrasound tech said it looked normal. My doctor said based on my family history and the fact that it was growing, she wanted it out.

Yesterday, I went to see the surgeon. I had to explain my life history to the med student -- the past surgeries, the eating disorder, the anxiety, the gastro problems. I had to take my pants off and I had to wait an hour for the doctor to come see me. When he did, he explained that cancer of this type is very very very very very very rare and the fact that I had someone in my family with it made it just very very rare. 

Then he told me BUT he had a friend who'd had a lump at a lipo incision and it turned out to be some other very very very very rare and bizarre form of cancer and she'd had to get chemo and radiation and the whole nine yards. I think he was trying to help me justify the expense and inconvenience of removing something that was probably nothing, but instead he just freaked me out even worse, which isn't hard when something very very very very very rare has already happened to your mother TWICE.

Fuck your very very rare.

So then he asked me what I wanted to do. And I said "I've been worrying about this for nine years. Get it out of me." And as I said it, I realized I was going to start crying again, thus completing the humiliating flashback to pregnancy. All three of them -- the doctor, the nurse and the med student, watched me try to make it through the doctor explaining what would happen next without letting the tears actually fall off my eyelashes. I made it to the last sentence, and then I couldn't contain them any more. 

Nobody said anything. The nurse handed me a box of tissues and they all filed out the door. I wondered what they were saying about me in the hall, because I've been listening to med students whose voices are louder than they think discuss whether my problems are serious a lot in these past few weeks. 

It's pretty awful.

But I'm getting The Lump taken out, because it's growing and it hurts and the little angel is almost the age that I was when I found out my life was going to get derailed for a few years. Now on the other side of things, I know I would probably handle cancer even worse with an existing anxiety disorder and no family in town to shuttle to. I've been kind of a shitty mom in the past few weeks anyway what with trying to handle adjustments at work and Beloved being on the road and the little angel and me getting sick for a week. I've yelled more than usual. I've looked up from email and realized I didn't know which yard she was playing in. I've made dinner late and it hasn't contained vegetables. I've gone in to check on her after she went to bed and realized I hadn't said I love you that day. 

I'm sad and I'm scared and I want it out. So it's coming out in two weeks.