Breast cancer blog experience a Natural Mastectomy

I didn't like the way the radiologist spoke to me over the phone when she called with the results of my biopsy. I didn't like the biopsy, the needle slicing into my skin, tears pummelling down my face, her distress at my distress, the fact that she was moving so fast to find out what the lump was made of. It didn't look good she told me after the mammogram. Gee thanks, just what I need, radiation when I might have cancer.

Two days later, over the phone, she tells me the news aint good. It's cancer, she says, its a fast growing, high grade, eostregen positive lump and you had better get it cut off soon, within three weeks.

I'm at work in the Australian wine store in Chandler Arizona, having left Sydney two years before to come and live in America. To be with a group of people called People Unlimited, who were dedicated to ending physical death for the human body. And I have cancer? And this woman sounds like if I don't do what she says I might die tommorrow.

Strangely, I didn't feel sick. Nothing was wrong with me other than this huge lump in my body that I had completely overlooked. I was suspicious of the tone of her voice. She seemed more worried than I was. Don't get me wrong, I was completely shocked and freaked, but I didn't feel bad. I felt normal.

Now began the process of having to tell people who loved me about my situation.

I decided not to go with her advice, though everybody I knew freaked when they heard the big 'c' and wanted me, oh how they wanted me to go get it cut out. I kept telling them, but its not going to be a lumpectomy with these tiny breasts, it's going to have to be a mastectomy, and I'm not willing to have some surgeon slice into my chest and take whatever the hell she or he thinks should be sliced off my body. We all know and they know, that they can never be sure they 'got it all.'

Just to make everybody feel better, and in America, everybody thinks the doctors have the cure, I did go to a surgeon who had showed some willingness to operate and bill me on a monthly basis, I didn't have health insurance, I know, bad bad bad.

She was about 20 years of age and very enthusiastic about mastectomizing my body. Oh, and she would recommend removing lymph nodes from my armpits, even though there was no sign of cancer in my lymph, still she thought it would be smart. And then, you could wear this elastic brace for the rest of your life to keep your arm tight because without your nodes, you're going to be fucked. No, of course, she didn't use such language in her clinic. No, but she did try to show me that there was a hard node under my arm by pressing deep into the pit and going, see, see, can you feel that lump? But I couldn't feel that lump and I took my new boyfriend and closest girlfriend by their hands and got out of there.

I just couldn't buy into the whole fear thing. Kindalike when AIDS first came to public attention, and all the buses in Sydney were splattered with long large posters warning us all to use condoms and have safe sex because if we didn't , look, we might die of the sex disease.

I denied the cancer to myself. I knew it was there and real and dangerous, but I denied it. I was not going to rush into mutilation and posioning myself at the hands of medical 'practitioners." Let them practice on women who want them to slice their breasts off, they didn't need me with my contempt and resistance.

I was scared, yes, but deep down I knew I was not born to die, and every cell and inch of me wanted to live and keep living and be the kind of person that outlives all of death and depression, I wanted to be an example to the world, that it was really true, human beings really could be physically immortal.