Dog Lived (and So Will I) by Teresa J. Rhyne

Author:Teresa J. Rhyne [Rhyne, Teresa J.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2012-10-01T05:00:00+00:00

PART II

Chapter 13

HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS OF MALIGNANCY

Seamus’s lump was discovered in a doggie spa. Mine was found in the shower.

My left hand brushed over the upper side of my right breast while I was shaving my underarm. Something felt unusual, thick.

If I were a better cook, I would have known that something thickening will soon harden. But ever since Chris moved in, he’d taken over doing all of the cooking in our house. When I got out of the shower, I put my right breast in his face.

“Does this feel strange to you? Like a lump?”

Undaunted by my approach, Chris spent several minutes in careful examination of the specimen presented, while I tried to focus him on the upper right side in a less preferred area near my armpit.

“I can feel what you’re talking about, but it doesn’t feel like a lump.”

“No, it doesn’t. But it’s weird. I think I better watch it.”

“Probably a good idea.”

Over the next couple of weeks, I watched it. Every so often in the shower and in the morning lying in bed I’d run my fingers across the area. I pressed. I poked. And I hoped it would go away, but I knew that it wasn’t. I tried to focus on work, particularly since the last quarter of the year is typically the busiest in my practice. And my law office was particularly important now. Having a happy and stable home life had given me the courage to take a huge step professionally earlier that year. I’d left my law partnership and opened a new solo law office. The first ten months had been exhilarating and the office looked to be a success. I couldn’t afford to be distracted. But however determined I was to stay focused, my thoughts ricocheted from the logical “I should get to the doctor’s office” to the classic “I’m way too busy right now” to the reassuring “I just had a clean mammogram less than four months ago.”

That was in early November. By December the thickening was an unmistakable hard lump. No chefs were needed. I was going to the doctor. In December.

The first appointment I could get was December 18, the same day as my office Christmas party (and one day off from the anniversary of Seamus’s first chemo treatment, I couldn’t help but note). I had a certain atmosphere in mind for this dinner, and it didn’t include a dark cloud of disease.

My new solo law office had opened on January 2 of that year. My plans were big and modest at the same time. I called it “The Teresa Rhyne Law Group, A Professional Corporation” even though it was just me, Michelle (my extremely capable administrative assistant), Laureen (my part-time, very efficient, and sharp paralegal), and the ever-flexible Chris to help with the bookkeeping and manly stuff (lifting water bottles, moving furniture, scaring off door-to-door solicitors, and even, for a while, taking out the trash). And of course there was Seamus, who could now come to work with me on most days.

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