Elizabeth Edwards: Remembering That Day

[question everything]

(apologies if already posted)

We Do Not Walk Alone
Remembering That Day
Posted by Elizabeth Edwards on Thu, Sep 28, 2006

(snip)

My face was tilted toward the stream of water from the showerhead, I wrote. Water spilled from the corners of my closed eyes as my fingers outlined the unfamiliar lump in my right breast. Around and around again, I traced its edges. Try as I might, it wouldn't go away. How could I have missed something this size when I showered yesterday? Or the day before? Or . . . but it didn't matter. I'd found it today, this lump, firm and big on the side of my breast. I kept my eyes closed and finished rinsing my hair. The timing wasn't great; is it ever?

It was two weeks before the Presidential election of 2004. And I wasn't home; I was in Kenosha, Wisconsin, campaigning for the Democratic ticket. The one good thing: I had a friend with me. I wrote of when I called my dear friend Hargrave to feel the lump: she pressed her fingers against the bulge on my right breast, which felt as smooth and firm as a plum.

She pressed her lips together and looked at me directly and gently, just like she was listening to a student in one of her classes give the wrong answer. "Hmmm," she said, calmly meeting my eyes. "When was your last mammogram?" I hated to admit it, but it had been too long, much too long. For years, I had made all the excuses women make for not taking care of these things - the two young children I was raising, the house I was running.

We had moved to Washington four years earlier, and I had never found a doctor there. Life just always seemed to get in the way. All lousy excuses, I knew, for not taking care of myself. So that's why I spoke up, that's why I went public. Because I know there are women like me out there, women who take care of everyone else in the family, but put their own health last on the list of priorities. I started thinking of my own mortality and what it would mean for those I loved, and I realized that caring for myself was also caring for them.

(snip)

http://health.yahoo.com/breastcancerawareness06/notalone/21/remembering-that-day;_ylt=Ak7USN7IP8eTHncW12ySyZBVgc0F

Edwards' Book, Saving Graces

http://www.randomhouse.com/broadway/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780767925372