I was driving home from work tonight in my Mini Cooper with the windows rolled down allowing the air, heavy with humidity, to sweep through my car. Exhausted after 13 straight hours of work at two different jobs, I passed by a field on a road with a 50 mph speed limit. I had been anxious to get home to lay down my bed, but my attention was captivated by what must have been hundreds of fireflies dancing above two-foot tall, baby corn stalks.
The site was so mesmerizing that the longer I watched the fireflies, the lighter my foot grew on the gas pedal. It wasn’t until another car came in the opposite direction, twice as fast, that I was brought back to the 9 o’clock hour on Monday, June 23, 2008.
Then again, I slipped out of the moment and drove on auto pilot. The fireflies brought on a memory of the summer between high school graduation and beginning college. My summer fling had blindfolded me and escorted me to a similar field, this one only grass, anticipating a stunned reaction when I was finally allowed to look around at where I stood. Again, hundreds of fireflies. This was my last summer of innocence, because while I had already found the tumor a few months prior, a few months later I would have to face it.
What is it that teenagers are so afraid of? Why won’t they talk to their parents? Why was I so ashamed of having a breast tumor that it took me a year to say anything, and then only by the pressure of my boyfriend? What causes a teenager to hide such a thing?
In high school health class, I remember receiving a miniature, blue-rubber breast with three “pea-sized growths” inside. We learned how to do a self-exam on the little blue breast, but I now know what was missing from the curriculum: what to do when you find one inside of you.
And the importance of going to a follow up exam. Where is the guidance there? Finding the tumor is the easy part. Getting yourself to the doctor is the hard part.
Reminding yourself that everything is going to be just fine because it was fine last time, and even though the doctors feel the need to biopsy, that everything will work out just fine–this is the exhausting part….
