Intimidation Crab & Other Survival Strategies

Content Warning: panic attacks

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I know a lot of you left Facebook to ditch the drama - which I get, believe me - but posts like this from Daya over in FoE are often my little lifelines of sanity:

:D

The comments, of course, did not disappoint:

... and some days you just need this kind of silliness to combat, you know... ::gestures weakly at everything::

I don't have any news yet from my mammogram the other week, and as with most scary things, the waiting is the hardest part. Or at least, I hope the waiting is the hardest.

 I did the unhealthy thing, though: I tried to bottle up my anxiety, pretend everything was fine. Then the more I pretended, the more scared I got. Within a few days I was stuck in a panic loop, unable to think about anything but my own looming death, pain, and regrets. It was irrational, but also as real as my constantly sweating palms.

Anything mentionable is manageable. I love that lesson from Mr. Rogers and try to live by it, but I forgot it this time, beloved. Instead of mentioning it, instead of dragging my nasty little fear gremlin into the light, I hid it from John and my friends. I built walls around it. I guarded it. And so it grew.

It was only a few days before I fell apart. Blind panic, full body shakes, and finally, mercifully, a loud and messy confessional sobbed into John's shoulder. It was the scariest 24 hours I've had in years; I still feel the dread rippling forward from it now.

And yet, within an hour of pouring out my secret, I felt so much better. Talking about how scared I was made the fear gremlin shrink. Suddenly I remembered how treatable all these things we're testing for are, how it's good to check things early, and how unlikely it is that we'll find something doomsday-level in the first place. After so much certain despair, I felt a shaky ray of hope.

The next day, all heck broke loose again online.

As the internet exploded in a fresh wave of conflict, I had to go into survival mode. I know some of you are up for the fight, and others are like me: already panicked and broken even before this latest tipping point. So I thought I'd share 5 things I've been doing this week for my mental health. Maybe something here will help some of you who are barely hanging on, too.

Mammo-Mia! I Got My First Mammogram!

NOTE: There be bewbs ahead! Maybe save this one for after work.


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I don't know about you, fellow anxiety warriors, but for me any new body pain sends my brain sprinting towards Worse Case Scenario Valley. So of course when my left armpit and arm gave the slightest of aches the other week, it was RED ALERT ALL HANDS ON PANIC.

You might recall I have Thoracic Outlet Syndrome: a pinched nerve in the clavicle area that causes arm and hand numbness and pain. You might also remember my left arm is worse than my right. After months of treatment the numbness is mostly gone, but I still get occasional aches. So, logically, that is the likely culprit.

Does my panicky lizard brain appreciate logic, though?

Ooooof course not.

Adding to the freshly whipped panic smoothie was that we recently adjusted some of my hormone meds, so for the first time in ages, my tracts of land kinda hurt. I am not used to this. I do not like it.

I'd had a breast ultrasound last year, but never an actual mammogram. Like a lot of you with upper acreage, the idea of a mammogram scared the crap out of me. I'd heard the horror stories, and even watched my mom get the squeeze when I was a teenager. Mom has an insanely high pain tolerance, so she barely flinched, but seeing her boobs smashed that flat was traumatizing, ok?

Noooo, second-hand flashbacks...

That said, pain and panic are powerful motivators, and lucky for me a routine mammogram is one of the few medical things here in Orlando that doesn't have a months-long wait. Our imaging clinic had a spot for me in two days, and not only that, they had me in, scanned, and out in under 20 minutes.

Better still, I am relieved and delighted to report IT DIDN'T HURT, y'all. It really didn't! I was still waiting for the "real" pressure to start when the tech said we were done with the first scan. We did three compressions on each side (I assume because it was my first mammo) and each felt like a firm hug between plastic plates, no more, even on my already-tender poofs. I have a low pain tolerance, but I only felt a single uncomfortable pinch during one pass, which I think was more the top plate snagging too much chest skin than the actual squeeze.

Since then I've discovered the reason for my less painful experience may have been the machine. My clinic uses a 3D mammography machine, something not every lab has yet. Our moms had the older 2D machines, and if you remember a super smashy mammogram, it's possible that's what you had, too.

Both 2D and 3D machines look similar, but the 3D ones move in a half circle over you during the scan:

According to everything I'm seeing online these are superior to the 2D scans, with more angles and better imaging, less compressions, and fewer false-positives. They're also better for dense tissue, a plus since that runs in my family.

The older 2D machines are static, and do NOT move during the scan. So if you don't remember the machine moving on its own, then you had a 2D mammogram.