Background information
Your period doesn't come: there can be many causes
by Mareike Steger
Let’s talk about breast health
27.7.2024
Translation: Katherine Martin
When I discovered a lump in my breast, I was hit with panic and worry. But it’s time we end the shame around our breast health. Here’s my story – and important techniques you can use to give yourself a breast exam.
I’m sleeping on my belly when the pain wakes me up. The sensation is in my right breast, which feels like I’ve come out on the wrong side of a bar fight the night before. «You really can’t sleep on these things,» I murmur, running my hand over it to find the source of the pain.
And there’s something there. Firm, elongated and pretty big. I can still feel it when only lightly rubbing my skin. It occurs to me that it’s similar to how silicon breast implants feel. The slightest touch is enough to make my eyes water.
A feeling of panic begins to take hold of me. My grandmother, a woman who succumbed to an early death by breast cancer before I ever met her, hovers in the back of my mind. I have the desire to open a little door into my right boob and boldly shout: «What’s going on in there?» But at the end of the day, I’m the one who needs to come up with the answer.
Breast drama isn’t new to me. From a certain age (between 30 and 50) or often just after stopping breastfeeding, you can experience breast changes. And it’s not always nice. One minute, your breasts are keeping your little ones fed and alive, the next, they’re giving you cause for concern.
The diagnosis and its impact
A few days later, after an initial ultrasound at my gynaecologist’s, I’m sitting in the waiting room at the breast clinic. The painful lump in my right breast is seriously big – a whole 2.5 centimetres. Today, I’ll be getting a fine-needle aspiration – a procedure that turns out to be extremely painful. Partly because of the pressure on my breast, and partly because of the emotional pain it causes. Waiting for the results keeps me awake at night.
Not only that, but looking around the waiting room is painful too. With the exception of two male patients (yes, men can get breast cancer too – in Switzerland, 50 men are diagnosed with it every year), the room is full of elderly women. Many of them have brought their partners with them, and are holding hands. The room is silent, and I feel alone. Probably just like anyone who’s ever felt a lump in their breast.
A few days later, the lump in my right breast is revealed to be a fibroadenoma. In other words, a benign lump of connective and glandular tissue in the breast. They don’t normally cause any bother, but in my case, as I mentioned, it hurts when I touch it. Wearing a bra is a no-no.
The art of the self-exam
Since having my daughters, I’ve become a pro at breast exams. My first attempts at it were quickly crowned as «successes». In my «wild» breast, as a doctor once jokingly called it during an ultrasound, there turned out to be a lively collection of cysts (fluid-filled cavities that form in the glandular lobules of the breast) and benign lumps like my new fibroadenoma. This is known as «nodular breast tissue», while the opposite is simply «non-nodular».
I’d taught myself to do a breast exam with my hands by watching a YouTube video years before. That’s actually pretty sad when you think about it. That solo search for answers from my body felt lonely, like sitting in the waiting room at the breast clinic.
I couldn’t make head nor tail of self-exams at first. Just what was I supposed to be feeling for? What confused me most was that my breast tissue, which was so smooth on the outside, was pretty knobbly on the inside. Everything felt weird and full of glands. I wasn’t familiar enough with my breasts – and a quick Google search proves it wasn’t just me:
Of course, self-exams are no substitute for medical check-ups, but they do give you a better sense of your body. Supposed to be done on a monthly basis, the exams can be performed by any woman, even those who’ve gone through the menopause. I’m strongly in favour of showing our daughters how to check their breasts early on. We should tell them that knowing your body makes you strong.
Hirslanden provides a really good set of instructions on how to do a breast exam.
If you find videos more helpful, I’d recommend this one.
Know your body
Your partner can also help with breast exams, for example by looking for visual changes in your breasts and getting an exact sense of how the tissue feels. It’s common for loved ones to notice lumps before we do.
So, here’s where it gets complicated. Benign lumps are often described as being moveable, firm and generally not painful. They also tend to be described as round and smooth, comparable to a marble.
Lumps more likely to be a cause for concern are ones that can’t be moved, and those accompanied by swollen lymph nodes under the armpits. That’s why I always take care to check under my arms during my monthly exams.
The good news is that most breast lumps aren’t cancerous. But as any woman knows, the moment you feel something in your breast, your peace of mind goes out the window. It’s scary, and we don’t know what the lump is without a doctor’s help. That’s why getting every newly discovered lump checked by a doctor is the right thing to do. In my case, they’ve always done ultrasounds, and sometimes a biopsy too.
Knowledge creates confidence
The only thing that stops me from going crazy when I feel a lump is my nerdiness. I’ve reached the point of being able to draw the positions of most cysts in my breasts without even feeling them. That’s how I immediately noticed my most recent one just a few months after the fibroadenoma.
Two of my friends bore the brunt of my boob dramas. Their eyes widened as I told them about my monthly self-exams. Sheepishly, they admitted they’d never mapped out their breasts the way I had – and that neither of them would know where to begin.
Right there and then, I asked them both to wash their hands, pulled up my T-shirt and asked them to carefully feel the lumps. I probably won’t forget the look on their faces for as long as I live. I could swear I saw gratitude, a definite smidge of shock and whole lot of «yass queen!» sisterhood in their expressions.
My «wild» breast will keep me on my toes for the next few years thanks to hormonal changes and stress (yep, that encourages the development of cysts and so on). And I’ll have to know my bosom inside and out. The fear of finding new lumps won’t go away, but having knowledge of my breasts has given me a lot of self-confidence, and allows me to respond quickly.
I know that my cysts and fibroadenomas won’t disappear into thin air just because my friends and daughters know what they feel like. But I also know that there aren’t just lumps in my bosom – there’s a whole lot of pride swelling in there too.
Header image: Cottonbro/Pexels
What happens to a girl who only hangs out at the school newspaper club and wants to drop out of secondary school at 16 to become a midwife? Me! Allow me: Anja, art director in a design studio and author for the Zurich city newsletter Ron Orp. I'm still passionate about the topic of women's health.
I'm there to talk straight and call a spade a spade. This applies to design concepts as well as texts.
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