Get Your Mammogram

Carol was young at age 51 and had a lot of life left in her. Though a chain smoker and alcoholic she always had an upbeat attitude and pleasant things to say about others. She would go out of her way to help her coworkers or neighbors with small or large projects. She would happily go shopping for ill neighbors and catch up their laundry while cooking chicken soup for them.

As is usual for alcoholic smokers Carol had not seen a doctor for years. In fact she could not remember the last time she had actually been to any kind of medical provider. This was partly because Carol did not want to listen to the lecture about drinking and smoking. She was an adult after all and could make her own choices regarding drinking and smoking and other health preventative testing.

Carol developed a lump in her right breast. She never told me how she detected it as she was unwilling to talk about it. She ignored the lump telling herself it was probably just fibrotic and nothing to worry about. She continued to work and commune with her friends and neighbors and about a year passed. She finally came to the point where she could not ignore the lump growing in her breast and went to a doctor.

Carol went through several layers of testing including a mammogram, ultrasound, MRI and finally needle biopsy of the lump. The results of the tests revealed that the lump was malignant and that she had an advanced breast cancer beyond the ability of modern medicine to treat her.

Carol worked as long as she was able and eventually lost her home and all her savings. When she came into my life she was being admitted to the nursing home under the care of a hospice. She became my patient upon admission. She was an outgoing lady who moved into a room on the dementia unit. There were plenty of rooms on the other units but she felt she could help the most by staying on a unit where most of the residents needed help with almost everything.

I continued to see her every week and treat her through several scary episodes of bleeding. As the cancer continued to grow it eroded the mammary artery of the right breast. I received a panicked call one morning telling me she was squirting blood all over her room from the eroded artery. Carol wanted to go to the ER for treatment so she was transferred to the ER and a pressure dressing applied by the paramedics stopped the bleeding before she arrived. She was sent back to the nursing home with some dressing material and all went well for several months.

This happened a second time and the room resembled a chainsaw massacre because she had removed the dressing covering the cancer and blood sprayed everywhere. These past few days she became somewhat obtunded and I knew that is would only be a short time before she died.

Today when I went to the facility she was having short periods of apnea and was very confused. She was found several times naked and standing in the middle of her room. We quickly dressed her and I ordered some Thorazine gel. This worked well and she calmed down and stayed in bed the rest of the day.

I have worked as a gravedigger in the past and have had the unpleasant opportunity to be inundated with the overpowering stench from rotting bodies. At times I have had neighboring bodies fall into the grave I was digging and had to rebury them. The worst smell was actually when I had to open a mausoleum and bag the dripping gooey rotting body for shipment across the country.

Carols cancer reminded me of the rotting bodies I have had to dig up. Though living she smelled as though she were dead already. In appearance she looked as if she was rotting to death. I miss Carol as she was intelligent and fun to be around. I feel that modern medicine let her down. She did not want to be lectured about drinking and smoking so she refused to go to the doctor when she really needed too. Maybe if as providers we stopped coming across as judgmental more people who really needed our help would be willing to come to us.

Getting a mammogram is a simple thing and I encourage all women who are in the appropriate age range to get one. Dying of breast cancer is not pretty or painless. I’ll space the picture below so those of you who don’t want to view it don’t have to.

Warning- the picture below is very graphic and disturbing, however people are dying of this disease needlessly. GET YOUR MAMMOGRAM!!!

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit