CRIMSON COMMENTS by Rose McGlew
If you’re as lucky as I am, you have a friend stuck back there in the woodpile who you don’t have to talk to every day, don’t have to see even every six months, but they’re there. Permanently. I’m blessed to have several very close, good friends, but my woodpile friend has been with me a long time and she surfaces when I need her most and sometimes expect her least. Like this past May.
Tracy and I made the decision to be best friends in the seventh grade. We were both 12, in Mrs. Cooper’s homeroom and library assistants during sixth period. I was loud and obnoxious, Tracy was quiet and thoughtful, but I finally just asked her outright one day, "Do you want to be best friends?" She tilted her head to one side, looked at me with her big almond eyes and said, "Sure." That was it. Since then, we’ve been through first bras, first loves and first soccer tryouts together. We’ve been in each other’s weddings and suffered through familial deaths together. I’ve complained about my husband and she’s listened. She’s yelled about her kids and I’ve listened. We both reassure each other that things will turn out okay. Even the really big things. Like a lump that a doctor finds.
No woman likes to go to the gynecologist and I would rather my dentist drill every tooth out of mouth than to go myself, but duty called, so I made the appointment and headed in. I expected the visit to be completely routine. Lose some weight, get this blood work, blah, blah, blah. But when the doctor paused and said, "Hhhmm," my radar went up. A doctor saying that is like when the contractor sucks in his breath and says "Wow; it’s not going to be good." The doctor poked around and pushed about a little more and asked me when I had noticed this lump. I told him he was going to have to be more specific as my body is just a series of lumps. He didn’t laugh, but instead, took my hand and put it on the lump in question. On the side of my right breast. "Oh," I sucked in my breath. "That shouldn’t be there, should it?"
"Let’s not worry yet," the doctor said. "I want you to go get some tests, get a mammogram and an ultrasound and we’ll see from there." Well, I thought that didn’t sound too bad. After all, I am getting close to the 40-year/mandatory mammo age and it doesn’t seem out of line, given my family’s medical history. (Thanks, Mom.) I started to feel better since it was just testing, but my doctor put his hand on my knee, looked me in the eye and said in a completely serious, completely unlike-him tone, "Rosemarie, don’t wait on this. I want you to schedule these appointments today. Make sure they get you in within the week." He shut the door behind him and as I wrestled out of the paper gown, it dawned on me: He thinks I might have cancer.
I drove home in a fog and called Tracy in Norfolk, Va. I was fine until she picked up the phone. "I don’t know what to do," I cried. Of course, she immediately thought something was wrong with the kids and when I assured her that they were safe at school, she relaxed a little. But when I told her why I was calling, she was silent. "When are you going for the tests?" she asked. I told her the hospital had scheduled me for the following week.
"Okay," she began. "I can get the kids over to the O’Connor’s after soccer practice on Tuesday and then I’ll be on my way. Jim’s not traveling, so he can take care of things here."
"What are you talking about?"
"I’m coming up there," she said. "You’re not going through this alone."
"But…" All I could think about were her kids and all their activities.
"Shut up. I’m coming."
"Okay. I think that might be a good idea. I’m really scared."
"I know. Me too."
Tracy came up and we kind of avoided the whole subject, distracting ourselves with ice cream and pedicures. We took a test drive in a VW convertible bug that we had no intention of purchasing, but it was a beautiful day and we were together and we needed to laugh and be girlfriends.
The women who work in the mammogram department were wonderful. Tracy stayed with me every step until it was time to, uh, well, get smooshed. She gracefully bowed out of that by whipping out a book she was reading and plunked herself in a chair. They read my results immediately, as they did with the ultrasound right afterward.
Everything looked clear.
We walked out feeling cautiously optimistic and Tracy left the next morning to head back to Virginia. I thanked her and she looked at me and told me that thanks were unnecessary, that sometimes you just do what you have to do because you’re friends. Whatever the results, she said, we would’ve gotten through it together.
So please, since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, think about taking your friend for a mammogram. The ice cream and test drive are optional, but highly recommended.
Rose McGlew is a resident of Robbinsville. Her column appears weekly in The Messenger-Press.