Aren't You Forgetting Someone? by Kari Lizer

Author:Kari Lizer [Lizer, Kari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Running Press
Published: 2020-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Isolationism

Last week I was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. I diagnosed myself by googling the words unexplained breast bruise, and there it was. Even though none of the images looked at all like my unexplained breast bruise, I consulted enough blogs to know anything that appears anywhere on the bosom of any shape, color, frequency, or duration is most likely definitely cancer. My results were conclusive: this was the end. Further research on some lady’s website who posted pictures of adorable kittens to honor her niece, who succumbed to my disease, told me that IBC is aggressive and largely untreatable, given that by the time it presents itself with any symptoms, it’s often too late. “But I just had a mammogram!” I typed into the WebMD message board. Doesn’t matter, I was told by Wikipedia. This crazy cancer can’t be detected by a mammogram. Which explains why when Hartford Tanbaum, my radiologist, performed not only a mammogram last month but even an ultrasound because of what he called my “dense breasts”—I think he was flirting with me—found nothing.

Dr. Tanbaum reads my mammogram, then squeezes cold jelly on my chest and rubs the ultrasound wand around in it, staring at an incomprehensible gray blob on the screen before announcing everything looks good. Then he uses his hands to palpate my breasts, and he always waits until this moment to ask me how our mutual friend, Allan Rice, is doing. Allan is the son of his good friends, the Rices, and was a writer’s assistant on my show, The New Adventures of Old Christine.

He’s young and smart and delightful, but it makes me feel icky to discuss him with Dr. Tanbaum’s hands on my slimy boobs.* Anyway, the whole experience is all very strange—medicine mixed up with work mixed up with nudity—and when I leave, I feel like I did something naughty with Allan Rice and I can’t look him in the eye when I get back to the office. But now I’m dying, and none of it matters. I can’t believe I’ve wasted time on meaningless things like watching endless back-to-back episodes of International House Hunters and experienced endless back-to-back episodes of road rage.

I called to make an appointment with my internist because it’s always good to get a second opinion to the internet. The lady who answered the phone said Dr. Ghim didn’t have anything until next week. I told her it was kind of important to see him sooner rather than later, but he was out of town at a breast cancer conference. “Ironic,” I said to her with a brave laugh.

She said, “So do you want the appointment next Wednesday or not?” I took it, then got to work googling alternative treatments in Mexico. Just for the record, I’m not a hypochondriac. Except when it comes to cancer.

It’s because fifteen years ago when I had vague symptoms and laughingly said to Dr. Ghim, “The internet says I have cancer,” he didn’t laugh.

Instead, he said, as he was feeling the lump on my thyroid without a smile, “Let’s get a biopsy.

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