Chapter 4 — The Lump

At first, it was just a lump.

I found it in January 2024.

I was watching television.

Nothing unusual. No pain. No great warning sign. No dramatic scene like the ones we sometimes imagine when, looking back, we tell the story of the moment everything began.

I was simply watching TV when my hand felt something in my right breast.

A lump.

I touched it.

Then touched it again.

That’s strange.

That was probably all I thought.

A lump in a breast could be so many things.

A cyst.

Hormones.

Something benign.

At twenty-six, my mind certainly didn’t go straight to the big C.

Cancer was something I knew as a healthcare professional.

But there is a world of difference between knowing that a disease exists and believing that it could be inside your own body.

So I let time pass.

January became February.

The lump was still there.

I checked it from time to time. I knew it existed, but my life continued normally around it.

Work.

Jean-Louis.

Ordinary days.

Plans.

Everything that had occupied my mind before the lump continued to occupy it.

Then, toward the end of February, I thought that maybe I should get it checked after all.

Why not?

Just to make sure.

I called my gynecologist.

She had known me since I was thirteen.

Throughout all those years, she had accompanied me through that very intimate part of my life as a woman, through appointments you sometimes make almost automatically.

This time, I was calling her because of a lump.

The examinations began.

And very quickly, we needed to go further.

A biopsy.

March 8, 2024.

The day before my birthday.

I think it is important to tell you what happened immediately after that biopsy.

Because nothing extraordinary happened at all.

I went back to my life.

The next day, I turned twenty-seven.

I was working during my birthday weekend.

My colleagues had made me a cake.

I was happy.

I smiled.

I celebrated my birthday with them.

For a few moments, I was simply a twenty-seven-year-old woman surrounded by colleagues who had thought of her.

The biopsy existed somewhere in the background, of course.

But I didn’t spend my weekend imagining the worst.

Why would I?

I was twenty-seven.

I had a lump.

And a birthday cake in front of me.

At that moment, the cake took up far more space in my life than cancer did.

The weekend passed.

Then Monday came.

March 11, 2024.

I was at work when my phone rang.

My gynecologist’s office.

They wanted to see me as soon as possible.

I was working.

So I asked if it could wait until the next day.

Yes.

The appointment could be scheduled for March 12.

And strangely, that answer reassured me.

In my mind, the reasoning seemed almost obvious:

If it can wait until tomorrow, it can’t be that urgent.

If it were really serious, they would have asked me to come in immediately.

Right?

So I carried on with my day.

I kept working.

Taking care of others.

Doing what I knew how to do.

The phone had rung, an appointment had been made, and yet my day continued like any other.

I didn’t know yet that it would be one of the last days when the word cancer would mostly refer to someone else’s illness.

The next day, I got into my car.

Alone.

I drove to the office of the gynecologist who had known me since I was thirteen.

I still believed there would be a reassuring explanation.

Something benign.

Something we would simply monitor.

Something that would allow me to get back into my car after the appointment and pick up my life exactly where I had left it.

After all, it had all started so ordinarily.

A couch.

The television.

A hand on my breast.

And that thought:

That’s strange.

A lump.

Just a lump.

Only the day before, I had been at work.

A few days earlier, I had blown out my candles over a cake my colleagues had made for me.

I was twenty-seven.

And because the appointment had been able to wait until the next day, part of me was still clinging to that thought:

It can’t be that serious.

I walked into the office.

My gynecologist was there.

She had the results.

And this time, there was nothing left to wait for.

March 12, 2024.