“I’m sorry, the result is not what we had hoped.” 

The radiologist called me on a Tuesday, when I wasn’t expecting the results till Thursday. It was a tiny bit of a shock, registering maybe a 2.5 on a scale of 10 – but the truth is, I had been braced for it. There had been signs along the way, including the tenor of her voice in the voicemail she left me just a few minutes prior, which I would describe as anything but upbeat. Before that, there was the three-hour callback to Washington Radiology in late May, when I sat for what seemed like forever in that little waiting area with the curtain, wearing a cotton robe, alongside other women getting mammograms, and was summoned into the exam room three separate times for mammograms of various types. 

On the last exam of that visit, an ultrasound mammogram, I noticed the radiologist’s knitted brow as she conducted the mammogram. Her eyes and forehead looked serious. I asked her point-blank afterward, “What are you seeing?” She explained that there were two groups of calcifications in my left breast. One group had a mass and the other group was of a shape that was “indeterminate.” She said, “To be honest, I’m more worried about the mass.” I told myself she was just being overly cautious but deep down I felt concerned. And when pressed on my breast during the ultrasound, I could suddenly feel the lump and a bit of pain.

As I left the office, voices from my past popped into my head. My college friend Adreana: “Fran, you’re part of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee, in fact you’re President and Founding Mother.” Or my friend Claire in law school, a fellow A-cupper, who used to joke, “If I ever got breast cancer, I’d be like, really? It’ll grow? Do you promise?” Or, “Can you leave the lump and take the boob?” Indeed. Whoever would have guessed that A-Cup me would get breast cancer?

I thought about a conversation my dad and I had had some time ago – about genetics. He had said, “I don’t think any of that [lifestyle] really makes all that much difference, I think it comes down to genetics.” I had agreed with him, and we discussed how no one in our family had had cancer. Until 2015, there had not been any known cancer in my family, extended family included. In 2015 my 37-year-old cousin Toby was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer and died shortly after his diagnosis. We all thought it was something environmental he had been exposed to repeatedly, maybe the Korean BBQ he loved or something in China, which he frequented for work.

For most of my life, I have felt smug about my health, like I have special immune powers. In kindergarten I got an award for missing zero days of school, and during the K-12 years I missed 2 weeks total – one of which was because I got chicken pox. I have never had a major or chronic illness, and take no prescription drugs. I don’t even take a multivitamin, though I probably should. All I take is a Vitamin D capsule daily.

But here I was, suddenly, with a cancer diagnosis. I, who had always prided myself on living a balanced life – eating the four basic food groups regularly, doing moderate exercise, drinking in moderation (mostly!), sleeping 7-8 hours a night. 

I thought about the randomness of how it strikes. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason. Scientists don’t know why, either. If they did, we would probably have a cure. Looking back, there is nothing I could or would do differently. So there’s that.