Two weeks seems a long time to wait with a breast abnormality red flagging for cancer. But many women in the UK wait much longer. And women in low and middle income countries face an appalling scarcity of facilities for detection and diagnosis, as well as poor access to treatment.
You ponder this on your wait. You consider women in Afghanistan, in Yemen, in Sudan, in the DRC, in Pakistan, in Somalia. You imagine finding a lump or an inverted nipple as you shelter from a bombardment in Ukraine, as you trudge a scurfed track for water in Bangladesh, as you queue for food aid in a Syrian refugee camp years from your own home.
These thoughts, along with a twice daily mindfulness practice, dial down your anxiety. You find, to your surprise, you can put things in perspective. You stop catastrophising. Here in Scotland, in the capital city, you have access to health care. You have a close circle of supportive friends. You’ve lived already. That’s right. You’ve lived. The fear fizzles, flattens, fades.
You are permitted to take a support person but you choose not to. Going alone normalises it. Going alone says there’s nothing to fear. It’s just another medical appointment. And anyway, you want to cycle through the two parks and along the tree-lined paths with the robins and the chaffinches and the thrushes. You want to smile at the jittering blackbirds. You want to belly breathe the lucidity of the light.
You arrive at the hospital and there’s no cycle parking so you lock your bike to the Cancer Centre sign and you hope this isn’t disrespectful.
You walk in.
You walk and walk. Through the Cancer Centre, up one floor in a lift, down a listless grey corridor, past the cafe, down another indifferent corridor, turn right, into a narrow opening, up a tight set of stairs, and there it is. Your tummy tumbles. Name. Date of birth. You are ushered to a door on the right.
The waiting room is bright, fresh and awash with whispers. A TV on the far wall presents the news. A story about a woman suing a rape crisis centre for not providing a female only support group. A ferry procurement scandal. Grief worn statistics from Ukraine.
How does anyone decide where to sit? The closest chair? A chair with no next door neighbour? A chair on the far side by the window involving a walk past Other People who will look at you or not look at you and either of those outcomes will be utterly shameful? You choose, wrongly it turns out, a seat close to the entrance.
A poster on the wall explains that men get breast cancer, too. You know that but this is largely a women’s place. Nearly all the people waiting are women. A few have men with them. Others look like mothers and daughters. And yet others have female partners or friends.
Hands entwined. Phones scrolling. Fingers twisting. Reading the posters. ALLOW FOUR HOURS FOR YOUR APPOINTMENT. One woman, alone, young, her head in her hands. Another woman, elderly, deaf, a red anorak, can’t hear for the television. You get your book out. Names are called. You can’t hear the calling. You get up, move to another seat closer to the callings. You do the walk of shame without the shame. You’ve got this. You grin.
You are called forty minutes after your appointment time. You drift into the process. Catch the tide. It is efficient, compassionate, and thorough.
- Interviewed by the nurse practitioner.
- Examined by the nurse practitioner.
- A mammogram of both breasts and an ultrasound of one breast by a female consultant.
- She gives you the results.
- All clear.
- Back upstairs to wait for the nurse practitioner.
- Book out, reading. (Check the woman with her head in her hands).
- Feedback on your results from the nurse practitioner.
- Another physical examination by a male consultant.
- ‘Wear and tear’, he says.
- ‘Shy nipple’, she says, laughing.
- Nothing to see here.
- Patient discharged.
You walk back through those listless, disinterested corridors. You smile at the peeling paint, the curling posters, the automatic doors. You unlock your bike from the Cancer Centre sign. On the bench beside the sign a nurse sits with a patient. The patient, a gaunt woman perhaps in her fifties, is wearing a headscarf. Her skin is grey amber. She tells you she has cancer. The nurse tells her not to bother you. But you are not bothered. She is the first person you tell about your all clear. You are uncomfortable in the telling. Why you and not her? She wants to talk. You struggle to understand her. Her words are all swollen lips and rasping tongue. She gives you a thumbs up.
You get on your bike and bump down the kerb. Turn and wave to her. You want her to live.
SANDERLINGS 