and the timer says "fear mortality!"
When my son was seven months old I had an optical migraine. I'd never had one before and the wild flashing lights, the blinding white peripheral vision, the pain of the headache... well, it all had me convinced I was dying. I was going to leave my son with no mother; leave my husband to forage around web sites and musty bars for a replacement wife.A doctor visit later and an adios to the mini-pill solved everything. I was not going to die. Well, not right then, anyway.
So now my son is four, my daughter is 3 months and I have found a disturbing lump in my inner thigh. The post-partum timer has gone off, and again, I'm afraid I'm going to leave my children motherless. I'm afraid my small, painful lump (a lymph node? a cyst?) is going to spell my grisly death. It is a fear that I know all mothers have, yet I still find it almost all-consuming.
I know not to google "painful swollen lymph node" because that will just confirm that whispering, nagging, horribly grim feeling I have. And yet I do it anyway, unable to look away from the trainwreck of information spelling "cancer" "lupus" "don't self-diagnose, BUT HERE'S A BUNCH OF SHIT TO FREAK YOU OUT ANYWAY." So I've made a doctor's appointment. I will thrust the crook of my crotch at my doc and await her diagnosis.
Until then I will choke down my panic. I will go through all stages of grief, expecting to hear the worst. I will become completely self-absorbed and not even the guilty joy of watching Farscape reruns on the TiVo will pull me away from the gruesome fantasies of my young demise - and my children's feeble lives without me.
Stupid painful inner thigh, crook o' my crotch lump. I was happily ignoring my mortality until you showed up.
posted by haikumama @ 6:14 PM
2 Comments:
I hear ya - had the same lump when my baby was 7 days old! Talk about looking for a new mate - now he had to find one that was lactating as well...Turned out to be enlarged due to trauma from delivery, but dr said could be from simple infection and given antibiotics. (also blood was drawn just in case)
ha!
i spend all day everyday thinking these kinda things.
good to know i'm not the only one. or not.
i'm never sure about what's "good."
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