Symantics

Lump. It’s sounds like a silly word, doesn’t it? You could say the word “lump” in front of a 4-year-old, who would waste no time repeating it, to test the effect of uttering the weird, new word, and only about three utterances would lead to it sounding completely nonsensical in your own ears. It just doesn’t add up to its meaning.

Now nodule sounds so much more compelling. It’s almost science-fiction-esque and requires much more effort to enunciate correctly, with your lips moving all over when you say it. It has a certain panache about it, above a layman’s term, but not so highbrow that you don’t use it when necessary. It befits its meaning.

Which is to say that having a nodule in my left breast is a little science-fiction-esque and requires effort to say aloud, but I can say it because it carries the appropriate weight.

We (my doctor and I) have comfortably accepted that it is likely a swollen lymph node or a cyst, but the diagnostic mammogram in two weeks will tell us more. There’s no history of breast cancer in my family and I’m much younger than any doctor would even start to test. This is compiled on top of the fact that it’s actually located about six inches down from the center of my armpit, technically on the side of my breast, and not only is it extremely painful to the touch, but it’s shaped like a soft grape. Each menstrual cycle sees a small increase in size and discomfort, which means it’s being effected by hormone levels. Yeah, well, what isn’t?

I’m not afraid of the nodule, but I am afraid of what they’re going to do with it.

First they’re going to stretch my tit across a plexiglass surface, compress it in a vice grip, and take fucked-up black and white pictures of it. If that doesn’t sound like some warped fetish shit, I don’t know what does. I have D-cups, and during certain days of the month, my D-cups runneth over. I have a feeling that this exercise in body contortion is not going to be pretty for me. My girls are not accustomed to this kind of abuse, and I fear for their recoverability.

According to the radiology center’s website, depending on what they see at the time of the mammogram, they could actually do a biopsy or aspiration right there, at the same time, if they felt it was prudent.

Lovely.

Grab a big, fat needle, shove it into this extremely tender growth in my boob, and suck stuff out. I’m thinking I’m going to take some of my Vicodin-ES pills leftover from my dental work while I’m in the waiting room.

Then what? What’s really scaring me here?

What I can’t seem to stop thinking about is if this has to be surgically removed, then I’ll have this painful stitching at the backside of my boob, where the side of my bra wraps around my ribs. What if they tell me I can’t wear a bra for a while? What if I am not allowed to use deodorant until it heals completely? What if I have to stop shaving my pits temporarily?

DEAR FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER, I will be just like one of my stinky, braless, hairy patrons!

*runs screaming around in circles*

At least I’ll fit in then.

Nodules: the great equilizers.