Pink Ribbon Nation: Coming Out of the Cancer Closet

I never saw it coming. Never even thought about it. What do you do when you suddenly belong to a club no one wants to join?

Every July, for decades, I dutifully appeared for my annual mammogram. Joining a roomful of suburban ladies, I absentmindedly scrolled through my phone while waiting for my name to be called. Once summoned, I followed the appointed technician like a lemming to the sea. The drill was always the same. Slip the smock off one shoulder, then the other. Followed by the strange pas de deux now familiar to every woman north of forty.

“Drape your arm over the machine please. Can you push your bum out a bit? Yes, that’s it. HOLD your breath!”

Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

I still marvel at the barbarism of the equipment. Deciphering women’s breasts continues to confound modern medicine, as mysterious to technological advancement as to teenage boys. That said I never much minded the old-fashioned squish technique. I had long ago made my peace with this awkward interaction. “It is what it is,” as the kids say.

Afterwards I would pop my pinkened flesh back into my bra and head toward the exit. Filling out a reminder card on my way out, the receptionist would smile and cheerfully say, “See you next year!” And for the next twelve months, the topic never crossed my mind.

But last month, a phone call soon followed my initial screening. A breezy voice inquired, “Can you come in for a second set of images?” Even then I didn’t worry. With no troubling family history in my rearview mirror, I arrived for my next appointment both naïve and undaunted.

Afterwards I was ushered into a side room I had never seen before, still wearing my smock. Upon entering, two other women nervously looked up from the seats on which they were perched. Held captive in this makeshift detention hall, we all waited in palpable silence.

The next word I heard sealed my fate. The radiologist entered, looked around the room and simply said, “Anne?”

The next three weeks were a whirlwind. An impending cross country move to Los Angeles made a challenging situation feel Sisyphean. I needed to find a surgeon, schedule a biopsy and familiarize myself with the Byzantine code…