I am a writer, both by trade and by nature. I prefer using the written word to express my emotions, hopes and fears. It allows me to craft and perfect my message so that I get my point across, without the worry that I’ve been too ambiguous.

So if writing is in my nature, why do I find it so hard to tell my story? I can write about people who have experienced some of the most personal and fraught times in their lives. I can share the most personal of stories, from birth to death and everything in between, but writing my truth is uncomfortable – and sometimes nearly impossible – but my story is important and deserves to be shared. Who better to tell my story than me?

When routine becomes anything but

I’ve been blessed with an innate respect of the medical profession. My grandmother was a nurse, and that meant that hearing stories and talking about anything related to medicine wasn’t a taboo subject at the dinner table. I’ve always watched medical shows on TV – from dramas to documentaries where filmmakers follow teams working in the emergency department. My daughter is an emergency medicine nurse. I work in marketing for a health system. To say that medicine – or at least the thought of it – is in my blood would be pretty accurate.

That’s part of the reason that I make sure to get every screening test that I’m due for when I’m due for it. Colonoscopy at 45? Scheduled for May. Annual blood work? Done each January. Mammogram? Each November, right before Thanksgiving. I follow the rules set forth by my doctor and don’t waiver.

I scheduled my screening mammogram for November 23, 2022 – the day before Thanksgiving. Getting a mammogram is a relatively easy process. You make the appointment, stop and talk to the folks at registration 15 minutes prior to the appointment, get a wristband and then BAM! – you’re off to the Women’s Center to get the big squish.

There’s nothing terribly dramatic about it. You answer some questions about your family history, take off your top, a very kind imaging nurse grabs your boobs and sandwiches them in a machine. They take a couple of images, tell you that the doctor will review them that day and you’ll get a letter in the mail letting you know if you’re all clear. And then it’s over.

The mammogram came and went without much huzzah, and I went on about my merry way. We spent Thanksgiving Day with my in-laws (minus my BIL who had COVID), celebrating the day with food (so much food) and football. The weekend wasn’t anything eventful either – we watched Kansas get trounced by Kansas State, saw TCU destroy Iowa State and finished up by watching the Chiefs dominate the Rams. All in all, it was a great weekend.

And then it was Monday. I don’t like Mondays in general because they signal the end of “me time” and a return to work. And pants. I’d prefer to wear shorts and a sweatshirt every day, but I digress. That Monday I got a call from Julie, the imaging tech who had been the boob smasher extraordinaire for my mammogram.

“Hey Autumn, it’s Julie from the LMH Health Women’s Center,” rang the voice on the other end of the phone. “The radiologist took a look at the images and he’d like you to come back in to get an additional look at your left breast.”

If you’ve ever seen a movie and the main character starts to feel an overwhelming sense of dread, that’s what I looked like at that very moment.

“Do I have anything to worry about?” I asked nervously. “Should I start to panic?”

Julie reassured me that many women are asked to come back for a diagnostic mammogram, which is a fancy way of saying they want some more detailed images of your boobs. Nothing to worry about at all – they’ll rule out anything nefarious with that and an ultrasound immediately after the scans.

I went back to the Women’s Center on Friday, December 2, just a few days from receiving the call. The intake process was the same – registration, wristband, family history questions – and then my left breast was placed in a tinier holster it had been before. The tech got her scans and then sent me to another room to meet with Jessica, one of the ultrasound techs at the center.

Jessica was as nice as could be – calm, comforting and reassuring, telling me that many women have ultrasounds. She took some images that looked like a lot of black and white squiggly lines to me, and then went to show them to the radiologist. After what seemed like a lifetime of waiting, Dr. Scott Patrick popped his head around the door to say hello and share what he’d seen on the images.

“I wish I could tell you that the imaging showed a cyst, but I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at,” he said. “We need to schedule you for a needle biopsy next week to find out what’s really going on.”

I kind of blanked out after that. “Oh fuck. I have cancer.” That’s all that I could think in that very moment. “What the fuck am I going to do?”

Dr. Patrick continued to explain what the biopsy would entail – a local anesthetic would be applied and I wouldn’t feel any pain when they shoved a long, pointy needle into my breast to take a snip out of this thing that my body was now harboring. My appointment was scheduled for the following Thursday, a wait that began to seem like an eternity.

I left, went home and just sat. I wasn’t sure what to think. What do I tell my husband? My daughter? She’s a nurse and she knows how badly this could go. What about my parents? My sister? My friends? To say that I was panicking would be an understatement.

So I did what I always do. I took a step back, took a breath and began to write. I wrote down what I knew and what I didn’t, what I needed to tell Brian, Rachel and everyone else. I wrote down my appointment date and time, the name of the ultrasound tech, the doctor and anything else I could remember. What I didn’t write was the word “cancer.” I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t ready to entertain that as even the most remote of possibilities.