A Scare

At the time, I was in a highly stressful job. I worked easily 70 to 80 hours a week, and for the two years I was in the company, I worked through all the major public holidays, including Christmas and New Year. I was very well paid, I was motivated, but I was also always exhausted, and on my last nerve. 

That day, I was in the office by 5am because I managed accounts from three time zones: the Gold Coast, the US East Coast, and the UK. It would be a typical day, and I was gearing up for another 14 hours of work.

It was also the week of the annual physical for employees. I wanted to get it over with. Everything was routine, until the doctor got to the breast exam.

She frowned. "You have a lump in your breast." She kept feeling it gently, "Here."

I rubbed my fingers where she pointed, at the top of my right breast. It was definitely a hard, rounded, alien thing that didn't feel like it should be part of my body.

"Isn't this one of those normal lumps?" I asked, but she didn't seem to hear.

"Have you never noticed this lump before?" She felt it again. "I'm recommending you for a mammogram."

I went about my day, my week. And over the weekend, I went into the Breast Center of the hospital, waiting for my number to be called. Across me was a woman with that wan face and head scarf that didn't leave anyone in doubt that she was going through chemo. Her number was called first.

Alone in the waiting room, I tried to distract myself from imagining what I would look like wearing a head scarf.

It was my turn for the BI-RADS (Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System) Assessment. Because it involved sensitive, and highly expensive equipment, the temperature was set to the arctic levels required to maintain them. Human comfort would need to be secondary. I was shivering in a flimsy robe, which I had to open when they squashed my breasts, one after another, against the glass contraption for the mammogram.

When the radiologist did the follow-up ultrasound, she dimmed the lights as I settled back on the bed. I turned my head to away while she ran the wand across and around my breasts, checking the imaging on the screen at the same time. In spite of how clinical and efficient everything seemed, something broke inside me, and the tears came. This must happen a lot because boxes of tissues were ready on both sides of the bed.

I don't think anyone ever plans to go through something like this. Plans were usually for marriage, for kids, for career, for travel, for saving up for something, for living day-to-day. I never planned for what to do on the off-chance that I found a lump in my breast. 

Nothing tops the ultimate scare: death. Returning to dust (or stardust, if I wanted to be romantic about it, as 90% of our atoms are apparently made of cosmic stuff). That's it. That's all we get. But for me, an even worse prospect would be that slow fading away into nothingness from a long illness. Dying is one thing, but losing yourself, bit by bit, and witnessing yourself being erased from the lives of your loved ones, one month or year at a time. The phrase "pass away" describes this best. You pass away, unobtrusively, "peacefully," because the truth is you've become irrelevant to everyone around you, and to the people you've cared about. You have lost your place in their lives, no matter how much they may sincerely care and love you. "Passing away" is, let's face it, a relief for everyone around the dying, so the living can get on with their lives.

I didn't tell anyone about any of this downward spiraling of my thoughts. The results of the BI-RADS test came: "Category 3: Probably benign finding -- Follow-up in a short time frame is suggested." In short: it's probably nothing. But there's a lot of buts that follow it: just to make sure, come back after six months for the same tests, and then every year after that, and if it turns into something, after all, at least we caught it early, so you'll most probably make it through.

I didn't consider it as a relief. The next six months before my follow-up BI-RADS, the world looked totally different. It's one of the truest cliches, and has definitely earned its place: in the end, you can't take anything with you. Work suddenly seemed pointless. I always took my role seriously (too seriously) because I thought so many of my colleagues and team members depended on me doing my job. But really, I realized there were many others who could take my place. It was never meant to be a legacy, or a personal accomplishment that I could look back on when asked what did I do with my life.

I also realized for the last three years before this happened, I had been hiding under a rock, isolating myself even from my family who I used to be very close to. Work had also become my excuse not to know myself. Because that would mean doing real work. That would mean accepting that I was lonely. That would mean admitting that although I was financially stable, and doing well in my career, this was not what I really wanted for myself.

Soon after, I started traveling. Quick weekend getaways, at first. Long bus rides instead of flying allowed me to see more places, and do more things. I camped overnight on the shore of a secluded beach without electricity, or resorts around. Without the light pollution, the night sky was so heavy with stars, I'd forgotten how painfully beautiful and alive it was. I woke up, opened the flap of my tent, and felt like I'd walked in on something I shouldn't have seen: the moon and sun meeting in the sky.

All of this I did solo. Most of it, I didn't plan for beyond getting there.

When I was in college, I would go on trips like this. I wouldn't even pack. A couple of times, after my classes, I'd go to the bus station, ask a friend over the phone: "North or South?" or "East or West?" Whatever direction they chose, I'd pick a bus going that way, and go for it. Sometimes, I followed the bus to the end of its route. Sometimes, I'd get off at a place where most passengers got off. Many times, I went with my friend, Sheryll. We'd find a payphone, call my father to tell him I was safe, and that I wouldn't be coming home that night.

Traveling like that again, I got to know myself and my body in different ways. I was never the athletic, Instagrammable adventurer, but I had always been, and always will be, a curious learner. I learned how to surf. I learned how to climb. I learned how to jump off cliffs, and over boulders by a raging waterfall (because me and my newfound friends went off-trail, and the only way to get back was to block the thought of losing my footing, and getting swept away, and just jump).

I have to mention here, though, that this whole experience was less like a triumphant movie montage, where the heroine miraculously transforms into her best self, and more like being an awkward grade school student in front of the class, reading out her essay on "What I Did During my Vacation." I'm writing this not as an eat-pray-love parable, but as a stark reminder of the detours I went through because it seemed easier to go with other people's definition of "big" success rather than pursue the uncertain path of my simple dream.

My second BI-RADS result came back with Category 2: Benign (non-cancerous) finding. By this time, I'd broken down to my two brothers about this, and we started communicating more, and checking up on each other. We all decided not to tell my mother until the next result was out, which I still think was a prudent thing to do (sorry, Nay). At least we had definite answers, when I finally told her.

Did it finally give me relief? Yes, and no. While I'm in the clear for now, the lump is still there, and no way will I agree to surgical removal unless absolutely life-threatening. I still have to get tested every year to monitor it, just to be sure. I've definitely had to change the way I thought about food, my sleeping habits, the way I spend my days, and those I choose to spend it with. I don't consider myself to be in the clear simply because I've survived the limbo of not knowing.

There's nothing I can be sure of as my body moves through the years, and the events of my life. But I'm not looking for relief or certainty anymore. What mattered wasn't that I was "acquitted" from death with the benign finding back then. It was that the scare made me realize that I might die without really living life on my own terms. Like that lump in my right breast, the years I refused to give myself permission to be happy is something I'll have to live with for the rest of my life.