4.Picking up the pieces

December 2015, Thornton-Cleveleys

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."   Eleanor Roosevelt

Ten days later, antibiotics finished, and surprise surprise the lump was still there enjoying its anchored position on my lower left calf. In fact it felt bigger. 
Hardly surprising feasting on the antibiotics.
Why did I accept the antibiotics in the first place? I was flooded with fear.  I wanted it to stop growing, to disappear, for it to be finished, over with. Gone.

Lady GP waiting for me this time. Quick summary even though she had my notes. Mona Lisa face. Matter-of-fact response,
"Let's have a look"
I flashed my leg in a far from burlesque way.

She touched the lump. She measured the lump.  The lump made her frown. The lump changed the look in her eyes. I looked into the black mirror of her eyes and it changed mine too. A deep empty aching echo crept in under the door and engulfed the consultation room. No it didn't. It engulfed me.

"Okay we have very strict NICE guidelines to fastrack any soft tissue swellings. You need to go for further investigations and it will all happen within the next 2 weeks"
I've never seen her again. I wonder if she remembers me? She picked up the pieces from her colleague's consultation and I thank her for that.

I had a really strong feeling that the lump was malignant because I recalled the surface texture of a tumour years ago.  Before my children were born, my mother found a lump on her breast. The surface was like a cauliflower floret. It was breast cancer. She did really well. Had surgery, radiotherapy at The Christie and it never came back again. Hope.

Seven days until Christmas and words sinister, rule out, and fastrack crept round my heels like poison ivy as I left the surgery.

I phoned my brother, Craig, as soon as I left the surgery. I knew he would help me to be calm. Mr Y later told me that my visit to the surgery rang huge alarm bells in his head because it wasn't a place I went to unless I really needed to.

I didn't share this with my sons or mother. Didn't want to worry them. After all at this stage it was supposition perhaps driven by a collective fear. Surely the bogeyman wasn't that close?