As soon as I started to pull off my sweater, stretching the thin black vee-neck up and over my head, it suddenly occurred to me. I needed to remove one or both of my masks. I’d dutifully fastened the blue paper surgical mask around my ears, covered by a black cotton one, while sitting in the parking lot. During the entire year-plus of the pandemic, I hadn’t needed to undress while wearing a mask. I had postponed everything that couldn’t be considered essential, including one chore I was more than happy to delay: my routine mammogram. Now that I was fully vaccinated, I needed to get this unpleasant procedure out of the way. So, I removed the masks, finished taking off my sweater and bra, and slipped my arms into the pale blue cotton gown that was roomy enough to fit another three women inside.

I don’t remember the exact age I started getting my breasts lifted and shifted, moved an inch this way or that, then pressed tight under a heavy piece of metal, while I forced myself not to breathe. All I know is that I started early, once I turned forty or soon after. I did so, because breast cancer killed my mother. That fact put me at heightened risk.

Like many women, I have feared getting breast cancer, more than any other disease. According to all the warnings, I am doubly at risk, because I’ve also never had children. As if the physical discomfort of the procedure isn’t bad enough, I also have to endure an interminable wait for results, close to two weeks.

Much has changed in breast cancer treatment during the years I have gotten mammograms. When breast cancer is caught early, about ninety-eight percent of women survive. Such statistics have kept me coming back, even though I dread waiting for results, when every day can feel like a month.

Several times after making the appointment this year, I almost cancelled. I’m old, I thought, and I’ve made it this far. Aren’t I out of the woods yet?

To answer that question, I mistakenly did some Google research. I say mistakenly, because as someone who’s more than a smidgen of a hypochondriac, I’ve Googled health symptoms and conditions more times than I could count, in hopes of easing my anxiety. Unfortunately, reading symptoms, treatments and prognoses of illnesses has only made me feel worse.

No matter what your age or situation, reading recommendations for mammography will scare you. After I’d read too many and my anxiety reached a high pitch, I realized the warnings were designed to make me fear that the only thing standing between me and stage four breast cancer was a regular mammogram. If I thought being old would get me out of the dreaded task, they added an additional risk: age.

My normal trepidation about getting a mammogram was compounded this year. That’s because my husband has cancer. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed when the cancer had already spread. Thankfully, chemotherapy has so far worked. But his disease and treatment have put me in the role of being his sole caregiver.

Heading into my mammogram this time, I couldn’t help but wonder, what would happen if my husband and I both had cancer? Who would take care of us? Every time I considered the questions, I became more determined to cancel.

I readied the argument I would make to my nice doctor when she emailed me a reminder. Just to be sure, I Googled some more. As in my previous research, what I discovered made me hesitate in pushing the cancel button.

At the same time, I learned some surprising facts. While I had gone through the last three decades assuming I was doomed because my mother died of breast cancer, I discovered that only fifteen percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have a close relative who did. Eighty-five percent of women did not.

I then considered one of my other risks, that of never having children. This was something I couldn’t find any scientific data on, so I conducted my own completely unscientific study. I thought about the small number of women I know who’ve never had kids. Only two of those women have ever had breast cancer, I realized. 

Ultimately, four factors caused me to keep my appointment. First, if I didn’t have the test, I would spend the next two years worrying that I might have an undetected case, with cancer cells dividing unchecked, eventually moving from my breasts to the lymph nodes, and, finally, into my bones. Secondly, I knew at least four women around my age who had been diagnosed with some type of cancer in the past year, one of whom had breast cancer. Their experiences reminded me that just because I’d made it this far didn’t mean I was home free. Third, through my husband, I had become intimately aware of what happens when cancer isn’t caught early. If at all possible, I didn’t want that to happen to me. Finally, having struggled with anxiety much of my life, I’ve learned the best medicine is not to give in, avoiding whatever worries me.

I have never been patient about waiting. In fact, if something I want doesn’t come right away, I assume it will never happen. Though I spent years in therapy, struggling to unravel a difficult childhood, this negative thinking has remained.

Living in San Francisco years ago, I had access to one of the city’s top hospitals, through my employer-provided health plan. For a brief time, I enjoyed a perk I’d never had before or since – in-person, almost instantaneous mammogram results. Instead of going home after the test, and waiting and worrying for weeks, I was instructed to sit in the lobby until the radiologist had analyzed my films. About twenty minutes later, the radiologist would emerge and quietly assure me that no cancer had been found.

I have had my current healthcare provider for nine years and am accustomed to the drill. Following the test, I wait for nearly two weeks, worrying every day that I will get a call, telling me I need to return for more tests. Happily, such a call hasn’t come. Instead, a letter eventually arrives, letting me know no cancer has been detected. The letter takes nearly two weeks to arrive, but is always dated a day or two after I had the test.

Every year in the last nine, and throughout the time I’ve gotten mammograms, I’ve asked myself the same question. Is it because we are women that we’re forced to wait so long? 

The small California city where I live is surrounded by vineyards, ranches and farms. In addition to tourism and agriculture, our economy is fueled by wine.

My healthcare provider has several different campuses scattered throughout the county. The campus where I go for mammograms is located at the edge of town, right where some vineyards start.

The day of my most recent mammogram dawned gray and cold. The fog that had blown in from the coast the previous night hung low in the sky. By the time I emerged from the building after the test and headed for my car, sunlight had broken through, dappling the hillside across the road, lighting up the new green grape vines. Seeing the beauty of the landscape I felt a burst of joy, glad that I hadn’t given into my fears this time.

The other reason for this sudden happiness was that when the test was done, the technician announced, “You’ll get results online in two days.”

Walking back to my car, those words echoed in my mind. Two days. Online. Not a letter that would take weeks to arrive.

As it happened, those two days turned into four. But four was a far cry from the usual twelve to fourteen. And for the first time, I got to see the actual radiology report.

After receiving the all-clear in my doctor’s email sent with the report, it suddenly occurred to me. I had convinced myself that instead of this happy news, the radiologist was going to have spotted something suspicious. After more tests, that something would have been determined to be breast cancer.

For decades, I’ve assumed I would one day get breast cancer. As more and more women I knew received a breast cancer diagnosis, I couldn’t help but think I would be next.

Wrestling with anxiety as I frequently do, I’ve learned how compelling my doomsday thoughts can be. This time was no exception. I had done such an exquisite job convincing myself I was condemned to die, I now felt I’d gotten a reprieve.

In my Google research, I also read about a survey conducted a few years back, in which women were asked how quickly they would like to receive their mammogram results. A large majority said they wanted the results in one day. I wondered if my healthcare provider might have done its own survey, with similar responses, and that was the reason for making results available earlier.

Though I’ve managed to worry myself into tight black knots about my health over the years, I have never been seriously ill. The roots of my hypochondria are a mystery. As I’ve gotten older and thought back about my life, I have learned something surprising. For decades, I clung to the hopeless mantra that nothing ever worked out for me. In truth, I have more often than not been exceptionally lucky. Nowhere has that luck been greater than when it’s come to my health.

A few months after my husband was diagnosed with cancer, we took a mindfulness meditation class at a local cancer support center. One morning, the instructor introduced the Buddhist concept of Beginner’s Mind. As I understood it, living with Beginner’s Mind was like trying, in every moment, to see the world, as if for the first time.

To practice this approach, we were asked to close our eyes, place our hands on our laps, palms open and facing up. Someone walked around the group, as we sat in a large circle, placing objects in our hands. We were instructed to silently describe the objects to ourselves.

Right away, I knew that the small, lightweight objects in my hands were raisins. Since I was there, hoping to learn how to practice living in the present moment, I decided to play along. 

I pinched the raisins with my fingers, imagining they were miniature balls of dough, ready to pop into the oven. I went even further, thinking how wonderful those fresh-baked loaves would taste when they were done, sliced and slathered with butter.

After receiving my results this time, I tasted the world, as if it were a warm slice of just-baked sourdough bread, dripping with butter. I also vowed to only worry if there was actually something to worry about. This post-anxiety relief and joy might not last, I knew, but I was determined to enjoy it now, maybe by celebrating later, with a chilled glass of our local, sweet crisp chardonnay.

-Patty Somlo

Patty Somlo’s most recent book, Hairway to Heaven Stories, was published by Cherry Castle Publishing, a Black-owned press committed to literary activism. Hairway was a Finalist in the American Fiction Awards and Best Book Awards. Two of Somlo’s previous books, The First to Disappear (Spuyten Duyvil) and Even When Trapped Behind Clouds: A Memoir of Quiet Grace (WiDo Publishing), were Finalists in several book contests. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Gravel, Sheepshead Review, Under the Sun, the Los Angeles Review, and The Nassau Review, among others, and in over 30 anthologies. She received Honorable Mention for Fiction in the Women’s National Book Association Contest, was a Finalist in the Parks and Points Essay Contest, had an essay selected as Notable for Best American Essays, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times, as well as to Best of the Net.