PUNCHLINE / HOOK
I didn’t run metaphorically — I ran. Down the corridor, hurt, terrified, and already learning that a uniform can hurt you more than the pain you came in with.
Mastalgia — Trauma Memoir Shard
I was 25 when I first went to the RBH, with a breast Lump. Dr Courtaney — same name as my son, so I stupidly thought he’d be kind. Magical thinking. He wasn’t.
Not necessarily his fault but lack of knowledge of hormone education, also not to mention UN-diagnosed learning difficulties - trust in a uniform.
I went in with a lump and pain. They stuck a needle in. (lumpectomy) No warning. No real explanation. (and if there was i would have been able to take it onboard) No pain relief.
JUST CONFUSION Just a needle straight into a hormonal lump — like someone pushing a knife into a delicate breast. I froze. ND freeze. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t process. I ran. Literally ran out of the room, down the corridor, out of the building.
I actually collided with a man I knew — he panicked, I panicked. He’d only ever seen the strong, chaotic, powerful version of me. Not the version running in terror down a hospital corridor.
Two weeks later I had to go back for a scan. He’d bruised me so badly they couldn’t read it. I had to come back again. Probably the hormonal lump. Probably the pressure he used. Probably the fact he didn’t care. Probably the fact I should have had pain relief and didn’t. A mess. A uniform of trust hurting me.
And then the years. 35. 45. 50. Each decade adding more pain, more confusion, and yet more dismissal, cyclical no one realized then, no one tracked or linked breast to period.
By peri‑menopause it was unbearable. I stopped wearing bras, always had bars because society said so, chesty as they say. Stopped letting anything touch me. Fabric felt like fire. Pressure felt like punishment. The right side always worse. Always louder. Always the one that spoke first.
And yes — I wondered what it meant. The body keeps the score. Pain choosing a side. Breasts tied to mothers, nurture, lineage. What was my body holding. Not blame — just the strange logic of a body trying to speak.
The lumps came like weather. Hormonal. Swollen. Unpredictable. Sometimes mirrored on both sides like cruel twins. Sometimes only one. Sometimes gone by the time the appointment arrived, making me look unreliable, dramatic, confused.
The emergency DR appointment at 8am — by 11:30 the female doctor looked at me like I’d wasted her time. “How can’t you tell the good lumps from the bad ones?” As if I hadn’t been a religious monthly breast‑checker. As if I hadn’t lived half my life breast‑cancer aware.
if i had to describe both breasts at this time they where a firm mass of marbles painfully moving as pressed and pushed, so many marbles heavy and hurtful. I just wanted reassurance. Instead I got contempt.
I’ve had so many checks. Many mammograms. Two were so painful I cried — and I don’t cry. Not for doctors. Not for pain. But that day I did. Fianlly age 50 this radiographer said the magic words if its hormonal time, re book? Light bulb moment ( I could choose?).
I was 48 before anyone gave it a name. Even then I doubted them, as they had disregarded me.
One doctor asked if I’d “read Davina McCall.” Apparently there was a trend: breast pain, testosterone, media chatter. I said NO. Had they even read my history.
Their big plan: Nurofen for pain that could make me cry. Acupuncture if I wanted something “alternative.” And then a nurse — a healthcare assistant — took my hand and rubbed it with a Filipino massage technique.
That tiny act of human care did more than all the clinical shrugs.
Years before I went back for anything breast‑related. Years before I trusted a doctor with my tender breast. Years before I stopped running — literally and metaphorically.
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