I wear pink

I was a tom girl growing up.  You wouldn't find pink in my closet or drawers anywhere.  Boobs?  I didn't care for them until high school and in fact if you had boobs in middle school you were out casted and accused of stuffing your bra.  You know how cruel middle schoolers can be. 

I was self conscious and shy around others.  I found it hard to change in front of other girls even my sister.  It got a little easier when I was in college.  In college, especially when you play sports you don't have time to be discreet about anything.  You change in vans, behind trees, wherever you can find.  There were always others around. 

I had a great freshman year of college once I got over my little homesickness.  I was running cross country, playing softball, and running indoor and outdoor track.  I kept busy for sure.  I had just about said goodbye to my freshman year when I was in Florida for the outdoor track national competition.  I shared a room with four other college girls and we were acting crazy like college girls do, ok not that crazy.

I was in my pj's, my retainer, and settling in for the night in that comfy hotel bed.  I laid my hand opposite my heart and snuggled in to watch just a little more tv before calling it a night.  That's when I felt it.  It was a lump about the size of a quarter.  I could almost feel every side of it.  It didn't hurt.  I didn't feel sick.  I was 19 for goodness sake.  I asked the girls in the room to see if they felt what I felt.  The looks of concern surrounded me as they confirmed what they had felt as well. 

Here I am in my prime, having the time of my life.  I had love, I was healthy; in the best shape of my life, and the whole world in front of me.  Then I felt this and it was like my world stopped spinning. 

I called my mom to let her know what I felt.  In the fewest words, she freaked out.  I went to have it checked as soon as I got home.  You can image how uncomfortable I was.  There in the doctor's office being felt up by just about everyone and laying on a table with my chest hanging out.  Then a sonogram by a younger, handsome doctor, there again with my chest just out there.  Then a mammogram.  A mammogram.... at 19.  The questions, the explanations.  "I can make the incision just about here.  It will be about an inch long and I will try to keep it where your bathing suit can cover it.  But, you should always cover it if you tan...." 

Those words I don't think I will ever forget.  That's when it hit me.  Surgery?  Really?!  I had been sick once in my life that required hospitalization around two years old.  Now, surgery?  I have to have surgery? 

The surgery was quick.  I felt fine and even hit up the ole Wal-Mart with mom and dad on our way home.  They were concerned, quiet through this whole thing.  You could see the fear in their eyes. 

The outcome?  No cancer.  I have "very dense breast tissue" and I will always have a scar that will never fade.  Fibroids are just something that are going to be a part of my life.  And I will repeat the process above countless times in my future.  It's a pain.  It's scary, but it is worth it.  It is much better than radiation, chemo, losing my hair, my life if I let these things go and they end up turning cancerous. 

So, today I wear pink and I do countless checks for that next lump.  I have had a few mammograms and I will continue to have them.  In fact right before I got pregnant with Weston I had another one.  No surgery that time, but the lump was there, now it isn't.  I'm wearing pink in support of those whose lumps remain and infect their bodies.  For those that have lost their lives and for those that won the fight.  For those that put it off, waiting for things in their life to calm down only to find out they were stage 4 and fought the hardest fight of their life bringing them closer to death than they have ever been.  For the support their friends and family show.  You won't find more support than this lady showed here.  Mommakiss, I'm doing it for you and your girl, A.

Check um, ladies.  Check them often and go to the doctor to look at anything suspicious and do it now.  A mammogram is uncomfortable, but I would take the fight of an early stage over stage 4 anyday.  Go do it!  Nichole did it.  There isn't an excuse good enough.  This is your life.