My PSA for Your Hootnan-nays

I find myself telling my cancer memoir quite a bit.  To moms at the baseball field.  To moms at dance class.  To the cashier and the lady behind me at Target.  Anyone that knows-- or even kind of knows me-- knows that I love an audience.  Usually my stories consist of how I am asked to make bologna sandwiches or put a ponytail in a Barbie's hair or download Crossy Road on my phone all while I am taking a shower.  Meanwhile, their father is leisurely watching an episode of Moonshiners on the Discovery Channel.  Because apparently my children don't know that their paternal DNA donor  can indeed take the wrapper off a Kraft Single.   Even though my husband would gladly remove the cellophane from that orange square of processed cheese delight, my kids apparently think I do it better.

But for the past nine months most of my chatter and small talk has been about cancer, and how I am feeling, and how the kids and Clay are doing.  And for the record, we are all doing pretty good considering the amount of stress we are all under.  So that brings me to my public service announcement about breast cancer.

My PSA face.  And I love, love, love the necklace Kelly Sonnenberg!

Whenever I tell my story, I make sure to let everyone know that I had gotten mammograms early.  I had to get special orders from my doctor to have early mammos, because I wasn't 40 and insurance wasn't going to cover it, or something like that.  I say this because even I am shocked that I didn't notice my cancer earlier, given that my tumor was the size of a burrito as big as my head.  If my head was the size of a large lemon.  But I had had mammograms, and everything always came back fine, so I thought I had nothing to worry about!  My thought process was that I was proactive and I was taking preventative measures so nothing was going to be wrong.  Wrongola.  

It has been over nine months since I was diagnosed with advanced stage breast cancer.  In the past six or so weeks, six of my friends have been diagnosed with some sort of breast cancer or precancerous condition.  Luckily it seems like most have caught it early, and you know how I hate to brag, but I like to fancy that theirs was caught early because my story urged them to get checked sooner rather than later.  Because, ugh, my stomach gets all barfy feeling whenever I think of a friend having to go through what I have endured.

So here they are, in no particular order, weird breast cancer warning signs that happened to me.  Except I didn't know they were warning signs at the time.

1.  Itchy, itchy side boob itches.  I have no clue how long this went on.  Years for sure.  It would come and go.  I would scratch and scratch and curse my bras for being so annoyingly itchy.  I would buy those Maidenform T-shirt comfort bras to stop the itching.  I would search for tags that were not there that I thought was causing the irritation.   Then I thought it might be detergent or soap.  So I bought Free and Clear everything.  Still itched.  Now I know that I was itching right where that cancer was growing.  This is a symptom of cancer.

2.  Discoloration of skin.  I done scratched so much that it changed the color of my side boob.  Maybe scratching so much was the effect of the skin discoloration.  Or maybe it was a cancer symptom.  Either way, my skin turned flaky and a tannish color right where that cancer was setting up shop.

3.  Inverted nipple.  I thought this was just from breast feeding three kids back to back to back with no break.  I thought those babies had just done some permanent damage to ol' lefty.  Turns out it was the cancer pulling that nip inward.  Just slightly.  I couldn't see a huge difference between the two, but there was a slight difference.  Not identical twins.  Fraternal.  

4.  A faint line.  The more I think about it, I had a faint line across my left breast for a long time.  I never stared at it in the shower or anything, because hello, I was always being asked to make someone chocolate milk or put together a Hot Wheels track while I was in the shower!  But it was a very light indentation.

5.  Muscley feeling in only one side.  Here is where I really went wrong.  I don't know how long I felt something in my left side, because my boobs always felt like that starting when I was pregnant.  Fibrous feeling.  Like a muscle or something.  What I didn't know was that it is NOT normal to feel this in just one side.  Feeling it in just one side is a big neon flashing warning signal.  I thought cancer was supposed to feel like a marble or a Skittle.  Sometimes it does.  But mine sure didn't.

6.  A dent.  This one I had no clue about until I started Googling "breast cancer signs" after my last mammogram when the tech told me that I definitely was going to need to come back for my pictures. When I lifted my arm, the skin on my boob would pull in and make a huge dent.  This was the cancer.  I sent this picture to my midwife friend Jen wanting her to tell me that it was no big deal. She didn't.  And it was a big deal. I couldn't get the full effect of the dent, because well, I don't own a selfie stick.  But this is what it looked like with my arm halfway up.  

I have just sat here for ten minutes debating about whether or not I should post this picture.  But if I would have known about this symptom a couple years ago, I still might have that underboob and not be starting my second round of chemo and not be slathering Radiaplex all over my burned up, chopped up, radiated side.  So I hope no one thinks this is in poor taste.  I just want women (or men) to know that something that looks like this should be checked out immediately.

These were my personal warning signs.  There are others!  I just didn't experience them.  My advice?  Get your mammograms.  Encourage others to get theirs.  And take care of yourself!