Читать книгу The Big Five O - Jane Wenham-Jones, Jane Wenham-Jones - Страница 13

I left it so long because I didn’t believe it. Nothing fitted with anything I’d ever read or heard. Breast lumps – I thought – were small and hard and you discovered them in the shower. Like a pea – that’s what everyone always says. This wasn’t even in my breast really – it was above it where there’s a muscle anyway. It wasn’t even a proper lump, just a sort of … thickening … It felt like something that could have happened because I’d pulled something. Or lifted too much.

Or knocked it.

I’ve been waiting for it to go away.

But it hasn’t.

It’s got bigger. And I can no longer pretend. I’ve Googled of course. And I thought at first it was probably a cyst. Easily drained and removed. Some go away all on their own. But not mine.

But I’ve felt stressed and stress can lead to all sorts of things. It could be some sort of inflammation caused by too much cortisol.

Or a fibroadenoma. ‘A very common benign breast condition’ the website says. Describing a lump that is rubbery and moves when you touch it. I think mine moves. I’m not sure. I’ve prodded it so much it’s sore. Unless it was going to hurt anyway – in which case it can’t be cancer, can it? Cancerous lumps are usually painless – it says that on several pages.

Apart from the forum where the terminal women were talking. But everyone knows you don’t go to chat rooms with good news …

If this happened to any of the others, they’d be decisive, and go straight to the doctor and God knows they’d expect me to as well.

I don’t know what’s stopping me. It is a lump now for certain. So it’s not as if I’m making a fuss about nothing. I will phone tomorrow. I really will.

I’m just so, so scared …