Polly Vernon has her say
It’s not cool, but it is going viral
I’M SITTING in the corridor of my local hospital’s imaging department, waiting for another test on the lump in my breast. The lump I’d thought was nothing – I’d had it for years, have had it checked before – then couldn’t find, anyway; ah, but, no, cos then
I woke at 3am, had an anxious grope, realised it definitely was there, had possibly (probably? Definitely!) changed/grown/become itchy, and oh God, oh God, it was time to ring the doc, except it really wasn’t: it was 3am.
Now? I’m an hour into tests, boobflattening contraptions, ultrasound gloop. ‘Pretty sure it’s nothing sinister,’ says one consultant after another, after the GP who referred me, ‘but let’s just send you through for another round of tests, eh?’
It’s like a shit version of The X Factor. I do not want to go to the Judges’ Houses.
Thing is, I sort of do know it’s fine. Well: I did, before I got stuck in hospital corridor limbo, fantasising about who’ll say what at my funeral. No, but fundamentally, I know my boob strife is another strain of another virus – one related to the original, which is taking out at least as many people. I know my boob is not the site of a tumour – but rather, the current focus of the shapeshifting, pathetic-yet-traumatising emotional compulsion that currently has me in its grip. Hypochondria.
Before me tit dropped me down the Deep
Dark Rabbit Hole of Late Night Fear, the giddy spells that Google swore were terminal had done the same. Before that, it had been: adrenal burnout, overactive thyroid, Ménière’s Disease, MS, ME, while obviously every headache signalled imminent aneurysm.
Google was confident I was dying of the lot, never mind that each passed after a good night’s sleep, cos: they’d recur, a cyclingthrough of worst-case-sickly scenarios on shuffle ’n’ repeat. ‘Ouf: you and everyone else,’ says a GP friend. ‘Hypochondria’s a major issue. The econsult system means people book, like, four appointments a week, because they don’t have to navigate the embarrassment of ringing reception, so: why not?’
Hypochondria is the shittest form of anxiety. The embarrassing one no one posts about on Insta, even though we’ve all got it bad; how could we not? All we’ve thought about for 18 months is: illness, sickness, death. Covid, then missed cancer diagnoses, then Long Covid… illness has dictated our lives for a year and a half; of course we’re now imagining it in places it’s not.
But you can’t unimagine a lump in the boob. A friend and colleague is going through treatment for breast cancer right now – we love you Ros! – it would be contemptuous to not get this checked. So, I’m waiting for One More Test.
‘All fine,’ says the radiologist. ‘Harmless cyst.’
I exhale.
‘Were you worried?’ she asks.
‘Me? Pft! Nah!’ I say.
I button up, swagger off, wait ’til I’m outside the hospital and halfway up the road to cry.