Cancer Paranoia—The Beat Goes On
By Laura Yeager
I’ve been very nervous about
anything unusual looking on my right breast where I had the angiosarcoma.
I’ve been beyond nervous, actually. I’ve been paranoid.
About a month ago, I saw two
purple spots, little bright purple dots on my breast tissue. In a panic,
I called the oncologist’s assistant. “I’m sure the angiosarcoma is back,”
I said. “I’ve got two suspicious looking purple marks on my breast.
The breast that was irradiated.”
The assistant got me in the
next day.
I waited in the examination
room for about 45 minutes. I could barely stand not knowing if I was sick
again with cancer. I opened the door and shouted to a nurse, “Where’s Dr.
Kasper? I’m waiting in here to see if I have cancer. What’s taking
so long?”
I don’t handle the stress of potential
new cancers well.
The nurse gave me a dirty
look. She actually gave me a dirty look. I silently cussed her
out. Let her sit in this little room and die from not knowing if you’re
sick again with deadly cancer.
Finally, Dr. Kasper
appeared. “Now let me see this,” she said.
I opened the paper shirt they
had given me to cover myself.
“Where are they?” She
peered at my breast.
I pointed to the suspicious
spots.
Suddenly, Dr. Kasper started
laughing very loudly.
“Oh, Laura. Those are
radiation tattoos.”
“Oh, my God,” I said. I
started laughing and crying all at once.
For those of you who don’t
know what radiation tattoos are, the radiologists actually tattoo your skin to
mark where they should direct the radiation.
They’d been there all along since my radiation treatments four years
ago, but in light of the recent cancer, they had seemed terrifying and
dangerous.
“Get out of here,” said Dr.
Kasper.
Flash forward to last
week. A suspicious purple nodule had appeared on my incision line on my
right breast. Again, my mind flew to the worst case
scenario—angiosarcoma.
I called Dr. Kasper.
“I’ve got a strange bump on
my incision line. It’s purple.”
Dr. Kasper’s assistant again
got me in quickly.
Again, I found myself in the
paper shirt. Again, I waited alone in the hot exam room.
But this time, I didn’t spout
off obnoxiously to any health care professional who would listen that I was
waiting to find out if I was going to die. I sat quietly. Getting
used to the program.
Finally, Dr. Kasper came in.
“O.K. Let me see it.”
I opened the paper shirt.
She peered at the purple bump.
“That’s a suture that didn’t
dissolve. Sometimes, the sutures don’t dissolve and they poke up.”
She hugged me.
“I’m so sorry to waste your
time,” I said.
“You’re not wasting my time.”
Cancer not only does
something awful to your body. It does
something toxic to your brain as well.
I hope this paranoia of
anything vaguely out of the ordinary on my breast skin will pass.
Until then, Dr. Kasper is
only 15 minutes away.
Dr. Kasper. She’s the best in town.
And she’s mine.