Fear and loathing of the tatas

Ever since I was young I have loathed my boobs. And I do mean LOATHE. I was the token girl (along with a select few others) who developed early. (Translation: the girl who you felt bad for because she needed a bra in sixth grade.) Ever since then, the tatas have consistently been a source of physical and mental discomfort. No...make that anguish. I was given the nickname "Jugs" (or was it Jugz? The spelling escapes me now...) in high school and it followed me to college. I was mortified on a regular basis because of their presence. Boys would stare, girls would mock me, there was no escaping the fact that they were there, at the forefront...and then there was the rest of me. That's how I always felt. So I went in for a voluntary reduction at the ripe age of 21.

Then, because of this reduction, I wasn't able to nurse Erin or Meghan, which became a source of so much regret for me, that I had had the reduction without giving the appropriate forethought to the implications the surgery would have on my chances to breastfeed. There also were not a lot of resources available at the times of the girls' births for women who wanted to breastfeed after reduction. So when I found out I was pregnant with Elizabeth, I vowed that I would nurse her, no matter what. I bought a book written specifically for women like me, read it cover to cover, and committed to doing whatever it took to experience breastfeeding.

And then her digestive system didn't work. She was taken away. And I couldn't nurse her.

I pumped for six of the ten weeks that she was hospitalized, every two to three hours, in front of anyone who was unlucky enough to be around. At the hospital, at home, on I-95 travelling back and forth to New Jersey and Maryland with Pete driving. I pumped, and I stored, and I wrote down every time I pumped, how long on each side, how much yield I got, labeled it, froze it, transported it to the NICU freezers. The doctors let her latch on to me once, for five minutes, and never again. In the end, when she started to finally receive some of my milk, she got so sick from it (most likely because of what we know now to be her dairy allergy/intolerance) that the NICU pitched all of it.

I felt a piece of myself die.

And I felt failure.

All of these issues of self-loathing, regret, inferiority, inability...they have all come to me by way of my boobies. And last Thursday, the boobies turned the screws on me one more time. I went to a new ob-gyn because I have been feeling horrible lately. Absolutely horrible. Achy, crampy, feeling as if a truck ran over me a few hundred times...so I went for a check up and my annual. I figured that I'd be told either a) you're pregnant (because I usually am and that would be funny) or b) you've got an ovarian cyst (or something along those lines.) Instead, I had a blood test done to check my thyroid (which has been borderline a couple of times) and to see if I am pregnant because it is super early and a pee test wouldn't show it. And then the doctor found "something" in my left breast.

"It's probably nothing, but we'll need to get an ultrasound to make sure. And if it's something, you'll have to see a breast person."

Not what I was expecting.

So I get my blood drawn, and while that's being done, I look down at my check out sheet to see the words "left breast mass" written. And then I get my script for my ultrasound...which also has a bilateral mammogram tacked on.

The sight of the word "mass" was enough to make me spin. I became dizzy. My children and my husband flashed before my eyes. I felt really sick. "Mass?" What the hell? That word conjured up so many other horrible words in my brain...like illness and operations and reconstructive surgery and chemo and biopsy and death.

I realize that this is irrational fear, and that many many women have cystic tissue in their breasts and it all turns out to be fine. I've had cystic tissue in the past. No biggie, right?

So, so wrong.

I feel fairly certain that all will be well. Simply because it must be well. I am a mother to three daughters, for Christ's sake. I must be fine. Everything must be fine. I guess I'm just rocked by the irony of it all...I finally begin to realize and embrace the joy and perfection in my world, with all of its imperfections, and that's when the doctor will find a "left breast mass?" Isn't that just a little too Alanis Morrisette?

My blood test results will be back on Monday. My tests are Monday, too. So for tonight and tomorrow, I'm trying to relax against the backdrop of how ill and exhausted and frightened I feel, trying instead to focus on the excitement of taking our older two to the movies tomorrow, and the comfort of celebrating Meg's fifth birthday with my mom, grandparents and in-laws tomorrow. Wall-E cake and all. Everything else will have to wait. No matter what "everything else" is.