Day 2 – My Healing Journey

Hi everyone,

As promised, I will begin to relay the series of events that led to my health sabbatical a year and a half ago.

My world was turned upside down after a series of mammograms revealed something suspicious. I had been experiencing some discomfort in my right breast and had gone to my doctor several times only to be told “you should be ok.”

It all started in my backyard. I had been gardening and was bitten by some sort of a bug all over my right breast. I started itching and went into the house to look and there were nine bites all over my right breast. It was so odd because I had only felt one little bite but when that bite started itching and wouldn’t stop, I decided to go in and take a look.

I put some calamine lotion on the bites and continued my gardening not thinking anything about it at all.

The bites began to dry up and heal, but one of those bites that was very close to the nipple never healed at all. So over the course of a year, I continued to go back to my doctor for answers.

Knowing in my gut that something wasn’t right, she blew me off each time and told me as long as it wasn’t cracked or bleeding, “you should be fine.”

After a year it didn’t look much better, so I requested a mammogram to which she replied that I wasn’t due yet. I told her I really didn’t care whether I was due or not, I needed another mammogram for my own peace of mind. I pushed to have it done even though the insurance wasn’t going to pay for it.

At that point, I fired my doctor and decided to advocate for myself. I went to have the mammogram and they called me back in for additional films. A week later they called me back in for more films and announced that they wanted to do a biopsy, which was very alarming to me. But somehow, my gut had told me all along that there was something wrong, I just didn’t listen.

In hindsight, I should’ve listened to my gut long before a year and I should’ve fired my doctor early on after the first few episodes of telling me I should be fine.

This was the beginning of me finally taking responsibility for my own health and not relying on a single person just because they had an MD behind their name.

Tomorrow, I will fill you in on the results of the biopsy.