It was in mid-August of this year (2022) when I felt a lump on my breast. I just turned 43 years old. I did a self-breast examination after my left breast started feeling sore, and I discovered the firm lump on my breast. Immediately, I went to see my primary care physician, in which, I was ordered to get a mammogram. (Previously, because of my breastfeeding status, I was waiting 6 months after breast feeding to get a mammogram as recommended; however, this time it was urgent).
I am writing this blog post because I wanted to write about the anxiety that I have felt during my breast cancer screenings and how I was able to process this with the use and knowledge that I have in Expressive Arts (Scott-Alexander, 2020). I have searched online and was not able to find a lot of information about this matter. One post I found was this: How to Manage Breast Cancer Screening/ Diagnosis Anxiety.
One of the ways I coped with my breast screening anxiety was with the use of an art journal. On the day of my mammogram, I was hopeful to finally learn what was going on with my left breast, but only to sent to ultrasound after learning I have dense breasts. And unfortunately, after both of my mammogram and ultrasound screenings (that happened on the same day), my radiologist came to the room to speak to me (with my husband by my side), to notify me that I will have to undergo another screening, an MRI. They found something suspicious on my left breast.
These are two poems I wrote on my art journal. Prior to writing the poems, I went for a walk with my polaroid camera and took two pictures of objects that I was attracted to. One was a lumpy tree and the other were flowers growing from the hard ground.
Haiku
Pink flower bunches
Pushed through the hard ground to grow
Showing persistence
Lumpy Tree
I am a lumpy tree
I sit here at the corner
Watching passersby and the vineyard across the street
I am curious and respectful
I don’t bother anyone
As the evening come, birds come back
On my treetop to rest for the day.
My MRI appointment was scheduled to be in about two weeks after my mammogram/ultrasound. It is this time that I felt was the most challenging, the time of waiting and not knowing. In Expressive Arts, we call this the liminal space (Turner, 1974), or another way to say this is the state of being in limbo. The longer I waited the more time I had to pester about things that could possibly go wrong, and I also felt the stress that was happening in our household because of it. This is another collage from my art journal.
While getting my MRI, my husband was in the room with me as the MRI technician tried to calm me down to not worry and reassured me that maybe this was just a fat tissue, and since I have dense breasts, he said, it’s good that I am getting an MRI.
A few days later I heard back from my doctor’s office. A message was left on my voicemail, a woman (it was either the medical assistant or nurse) saying that they were suspicious findings on my MRI results, I was being called back and this time I would have to undergo two breast biopsies.
It was another three weeks and three days before my scheduled biopsy appointment. I was scheduled to have two biopsies done at the same visit. It felt like a long wait, and I used other art modalities to keep my anxiety from heightening to a level that’s unmanageable. Some of the expressive arts modalities I used were visual art, poetry, writing, sewing, and nature based expressive arts. When my appointment date finally arrived, I felt anxious, but was also very much looking forward to my biopsy appointment, knowing that the answer to my health condition was near.
However, I was told by my radiologist and ultrasound technician that it would be another five to seven days before I will get the results. The biopsies went well, it was the recovery period that I felt the most pain on my left breast. Here is another collage I did on my art journal while I waited for my pathology results.
I felt I was now crossing a bridge, whether where it would take me, I did not know.
It took exactly seven days before I received my results. I have asked for my own copy of my medical records, and I was able to obtain them from the radiology medical records office that morning and read the results myself. In the evening, my primary care doctor also called me to tell me that my results came back in my favor. My tumors were benign and not cancer. This is another art collage I created a week after finding about my pathology results.
I would also like to acknowledge that I had professional mental health/ expressive arts practitioners who were able to help guide me in my breast cancer screening process and anxiety. I am fortunate to have such people in my life.
Please email me if you have any comments or would like to share your own experience with me at mariapd1@yahoo.com.
References:
Scott-Alexander, M. (2020) Expressive Arts Education and Therapy: Discoveries in a Dance Theatre Lab through Creative Process-based Research. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV.
Turner, V. (1974) LIMINALITY TO LIMINOID, IN PLAY, FLOW, AND RITUAL: An Essay in Comparative Symbology https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/63159/article_rip603_part4.pdf?sequence=1
Disclaimer: This blog is for informational purposes only and not meant to give a general mental health advice to the reader.
Maria’s Expressive Arts 