Last night after shower I was putting on lotion and suddenly felt a lump in my breast.
It’s not noticeable from the outside but when I touch it, it’s there, size of an apricot seed, and hard.

What I wrote above is my new Circumstance.

My brain, of course, immediately had comments about it:
– You’re never going to make it.
– You should have gone to the mammogram, now you’re probably stage 4.
– Who knows how long it’s been there.
– You’ll never be able to leave a legacy because clearly you won’t make it.
– You will lose all your hair.
– You will never have the same energy you had until now, with the chemo and all.
– This will kill your mother.
– You will probably find out that very few friends will be coming to visit you.
– You can say goodbye to all your work projects.
– You did it to yourself by eating so much sugar.

So, I wrote down all these thoughts, and no wonder, they caused me for a few moments, to worry, stress, blame myself, and feel overwhelmed.

I let myself process all these emotions and realized why I am feeling this way now and did some intentional thought download that looked like this:
– If I am meant to die this way, there’s nothing I could do.
– The lump is here so better deal with it now.
– Starting tomorrow I will cut out sugar from my food plan.
– I will schedule an appointment with my gynecologist and check this out.
– It could also be that it’s a cyst or a benign lump. It doesn’t have to be stage 4 end of the road breast cancer.
– I know at least 6 women who managed to beat breast cancer and are thriving today.
– I have a great health insurance and know great doctors in case I will need them.
– It’s possible that this has nothing to do with my lifestyle and I would have gotten it anyway.
– Maybe there’s a silver lining in all of this and something for me to learn.
– At this point I have no control over what it will turn out to be and that’s okay.

So the intentional thoughts led me to take the following actions:
1. I contacted my gynecologist and made an appointment for this week.
2. I contacted a friend who recovered from breast cancer and got the name of her surgeon, just in case.
3. I quit sugar, starting this morning.
4. I made plans to still be productive in my work this week, and scheduled exercise as usual.

The one thought my brain is looping on is about the fact that I was referred to an annual mammogram a year ago and told my gynecologist that I did my research and chose to not to do the mammogram because it’s more dangerous than helpful and I could have found out that I have cancer at a very early age had I done that.

Now, it makes no sense to me that I will worry so much and beat myself up for it when I don’t know yet what I have there.
Clearly my brain has already buried me, as far as it’s concerned, but it could possibly turn out to be nothing.
And if it’s not nothing, I cannot turn back the time and make myself get that mammogram a year ago.
I probably shouldn’t have taken it. Because I didn’t…

I wonder in this situation if it makes sense to worry rather than calm myself, because it’s the way my brain is trying to keep me alive?