That fateful day

On August 30th, 2006, just 2 weeks after arriving in Korea, life changed. It was a regular Wednesday and Mike and I had just woke up and begun getting ready for work. We ate breakfast, cleaned the apartment, and I got ready to get showered. Before I got in the shower, I performed a "breast exam" -- something I didn't really consider to be an exam because I did it so frequently that I didn't even usually notice myself doing it. It remains unclear to me why I started doing breast exams at such a young age-- possibly because of the current awareness about breast cancer and all the warnings that come with it. So, being completely ignorant and not expecting anything to be there, I was SHOCKED to find a blatant lump lingering across the top of my breast. Wait a minute ... that can't really be there. I felt around again. Yes, that is a lump. A very obvious one.

I immediately jumped up. Panic hit so hard I felt like I had been electricuded. I went straight to Mike and said, in a puzzled way: "Mike, there's a lump in my breast!" He said, "Nooo ... let me feel it." It didn't take much. With a swipe of the hand over the top of my breast he became shocked too. It was there. Plain as day. You didn't have to feel around for it. Mike commented that it was even visibly noticeable.

I got sick to my stomach. So many thoughts were running through my mind. I remember saying: "What if I have breast cancer?" and Mike's reply was that it probably wasn't cancer and I should just go and get it checked out. He tried to keep me from panicking, but it didn't work. began thinking about things that had never touched my mind before. I thought about death, I thought about how I wasn't ready to have cancer (I was in South KOrea and everything was sooo good, I had so many plans and dreams that had yet to be accomplished), I thought about other people I knew who had cancer. I paced the floor. I rocked. I hoped I was dreaming.

Mike perservered and managed to calm me down somehow. He told me not to panic and that a lump didn't mean that I had cancer. I kept reviewing what he was saying to calm myself down. I needed to talk to someone who knew about this. I needed to know what was going on. We walked to work,where I immediately called my mother. She was very calm about the whole situation and told me not to worry, lots of women get lumps. She told me both my aunt and grandmother had lumps removed that were just benign (non-cancerous) growths. I felt a wave of relief over me. I went up to Mike's classroom and there was a look of relief over his face. He said "Come look at what I found." He researched on the internet and found many sites that said 3/4 of lumps are not cancer and not to panic if you find a lump. We also found sites that stated it is extremely rare to get breast cancer under the age of 40 and that lumps in young women are often just a sign of the changing tissues in the breast. I was relieved. But at the same time, something was telling me not to take my health lightly.

I went to a Korean girl who worked in the office at my school and asked her if she could try to find me a doctor who spoke English. She agreed to try and I went about my day normally, pushing the day's events as far back in my mind as was humanly possible. I taught my students for 6 hours and went home as usual ... I convinced myself that this was nothing.