As I face new tests, new problems, future biopsies and possible surgeries, I am remembering my biopsy for my second bout of breast cancer... back in January of 2007. Long after my Doug had left our world and who so greatly loved my nurturing breasts and hated the idea of me being disfigured. How I remember the fear.. despite Tom's encouraging words. But, I had my two youngest with me... and they saw me through...
Memory of The Biopsy, Jan 9, 2007
We were three of the four Pike's
The remaining members of a family legacy
waiting among a shifting set of others in radiology's store-front lobby--one daughter, one son and a mother linked by blood and laughter in spite of one of life's most threatening moments
remembering embarrassing silly moments of our past.
James loved my last one--my funny last one--he's the performer, the comedienne. Thank god, he's mine, feeding me one-liners.
Together, they make me laugh over family times long gone bye.
The baby of the family, Mary, drove me here
carried my x-rays here, and parked the car. She listened to the intake staff, with the aloof attention like her father
but she is strongly a part of me, my watching self.
As she railed against this ridiculous wait,
and tried to breach the impersonal walls of disinterest in our fate.
My thoughts turned to my missing child
My oldest, Doug.
He was first to nurse from this left breast,
that in a space of time
pressed and prodded,and later slicked with gel will echo sound onto a screen to show the probable malignancy.
so the hollow needle can pierce it
I'm going to lose it--the breast--(both of them actually)
and along with it the cancer, too, I hoped.
(is hope a lie if it does not come true?)The receptionist gave us a hard look when we laughed. But for a few hours, we were a shiny chain linked tightly, silvery with a happiness glinting out even in that waiting place of potential loss and doom.
I fingered the necklace I had bought earlier that fall,
touched the curative dragonfly, murmuring "hope"--I wanted to believe in sudden remission,in some way to avert what we are certainly headed for.
I will always remember my daughter's and my son's fingers laced through mine.
Trying to heal me....
(please know that despite the cancer that now runs through me, Mary and James, you did... You did)
You three children, my Jessie bear, and JC, Zavier and how SHY... gave me purpose... you were my reason.
New doctors, new tests, new concerns and growing old ones now loom ahead of me over the course of the next few months... only this time, due to anger, ignorance, lack of communication... and lack of the memories of strength and giving... I will face these alone.
The chain is broken... and so am I.
"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence."
~ Henry David Thoreau
