Page 106 - She's One Crazy Lady!

Glennis! you“
getting annoyed with my indecisiveness and inwardly I was feeling more anxious; I knew that common sense should prevail. This time I just had to take responsibility and seek medical help, remembering the words of the receptionist. Was this an emergency? In my need to talk to someone about it, I took the plunge and told just my closest friends and closest colleagues – not family, not yet – not ever, if it proved to be nothing. Confiding only with those close to me felt so foreign. I had never had to do something like this, certainly about something so personal and, being the independent individual I was, I was not the kind to discuss any kind of ailment or admit to having something wrong. Thankfully, everyone I told was quite calm and matter of fact, but serious about me getting ‘It’ checked out. I respected that and promised I would, feeling better that I had spoken out. Marilyn was somewhat panicky when, at the end of our usual evening phone call, I asked her if she could keep a secret. I told her I needed to go to the doctors...
’re not pregnant, are you? Please tell me you’re
“Glennis! you’re not pregnant, are you? Please tell me you’re not pregnant!”
We laughed – a lot!
“No!” I reassured her, “I’m definitely not pregnant!”
I told her I needed to see a doctor because I had found a... I couldn’t
finish the sentence before being interrupted.
“You are going to the doctors, aren’t you? Promise me you’ll go. You must go!” I reassured her and
promised her I would.
Being a pessimist, as she sometimes was, (said in
the nicest way, of course,) Marilyn later told me she always thought it would be cancer. Why, she couldn’t explain. I didn’t think on those lines. I knew very little about breast cancer. I knew that one in eight women (at that time) could be diagnosed with the disease and hoped that I wasn’t going to be one of them; that the lump I had would be perhaps a cyst, a fatty lump – a benign lump. I hadn’t got time for anything else. As a family we had witnessed cancer at first hand when, as a young teenager, two of my aunties on dad’s side died of ovarian cancer within six months of each other. As far as I knew there was no history of breast cancer in our family. No, I would be fine. I was the optimist.
The following morning, I went along to the surgery to sit and wait to be triaged, wondering, as I waited, what everyone else was in there for. Was I nervous? Hmm, a little. But I did feel slightly embarrassed – feelings of uneasiness and guilt that the lump could be nothing and I was wasting their time, and embarrassment of where ‘It’ was. I didn’t have to wait long before being
not pregna”
nt!
once again, I put it to the back of my mind.
It was niggling me. Whatever ‘It’ was, was not going to go away. I was
106