Just Get Your Mammogram

I'm not joking, my doctor said.

“I need to go up to the Springs to see the orthopedic surgeon for my ankle,” I told my longtime physician, an internist I had been seeing since the ugly aftermath of the Pikes Peak Marathon—a run up and down the peak with a gain of nearly eight thousand feet over thirteen miles. It was my second Pikes Peak Marathon after many Ascents, where they bring you down in a van once you reach the top.

It was 2015. I came through the medical tent on Manitou Avenue and was met with a doctor and nurse, and some search and rescue folks, as soon as I crossed the finish line. “I’m fine,” I said. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to land in another emergency room after a race if I hopped in the car and drove home, only to be severely dehydrated and needing not one, but two IVs. So I went back and hung out for an hour, eating and drinking—the race doctor sent out for a Happy Meal when I answered his question about what I wanted to eat.

But the next day I didn’t feel good and went to the urgent care, who sent me to Dr. Fields the next day.

“Well, you ran up and down Pikes Peak,” he said. “You’re not going to feel good. Take it easy and rest. “No, no running,” he said, when I told him I’d maybe feel better if I shook it out a bit. “Try some reclining. Maybe some bad TV,” adding that he had just come back from a seven-day dirtbike trip in Mexico and was still feeling it.

We’re the same age. He and his wife are athletes who push it. We get each other.

Eleven years later, despite a year away living in New Mexico, he’s still my doctor and is on this ride with me—the running ride, the chronic UTI ride, the menopause ride—that was a rough one in which we made each other laugh a lot when it got so bad that my drama made him laugh, which made me laugh—and then, the HRT that we tried and that worked.

The hot flashes that bedeviled me even as I was running—”hey, Jill, you’re sweating already and it’s cold out,” my friend Alex would observe as we headed up the trail. “Duh, I’d say. “Menopause sucks.” “I’m glad I’m not a woman,” he said, “for real.”

That and weight gain, and constant UTIs, and being suddenly unmotivated to run or even work sometimes. The sadness and depression I was already treated for got worse. I could be an even bigger witch to my then-boyfriend, a champion mountain biker and fortunately, a former psych and emergency nurse who didn’t take any of my menopause madness to heart.

“All you need is a coke and a sandwich,” he’d say. “Your blood sugar is low and all that crying takes a lot out of you.”

“I didn’t ask you!” I’d scream, like a ten-year-old, slamming the door.

So Dr. Fields—and my ex—had been through it with me and my moods. The HRT felt like magic. I felt, if not like my twenty-five-year-old self, maybe like my forty-five-year-old self.

Which is why I’d been on it for about five years, after suffering and literally thinking I could outrun it, when Dr. Fields told me I had to make sure to get my mammogram when I moved back from Colorado from New Mexico. That was cool—I always got one yearly and had since I was 35. My dad, a physician, told me that because I had breast cancer in the family—my Nanny, my mom’s mom—had a double mastectomy in the 1970s—that I needed to have a baseline early and sent me to one of his breast surgeon friends in Denver. I was fine and had been ever since. Put on the gown, wait, get your boobs squished, out, all is well.

But I had put it off. “I need to see what’s going on with my ankle,” I told Dr. Fields, expecting him to understand. “No,” he said. “Got get your mammogram. I’m not joking. Then you can deal with your ankle.”

I had been running a lot and wanted to see what races I might be up for.

Instead of the in and out as usual, one of the technicians asked me to stay in the room. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said. “I want to see if the radiologist wants me to take any more pictures. Have a seat.”

I thought it was a little strange, but did as she said.

She came back right away: “We want you to come in tomorrow for an ultrasound.”

As she performed the ultrasound the next day, I looked up to see if her face reflected any worry, any cancer—like we all do with any medical procedure. Is there something wrong? At that point, even as she remained neutral, her face unchanging, I knew something was wrong. I could feel it. Also, in the words of my dad, I had gone to Drs. Google and Chat GPT to see what an ultrasound meant after a mammogram.

But cancer—no—this was me being dramatic.

But the UC Health portal said no, in fact, you are right. We want you to come in for a biopsy—this from a message I received on my phone and then my laptop. I got a phone call a little later from the radiologist to conform. But in this day and age we get our diagnosis from our patient portal. Which yes, is not right. I would have much rather had the old school treatment and had the radiologist call Dr. Fields and hear it from him, so I could worry and cry and feel cared for, even if it was a false alarm.

But it wasn’t. Before the biopsy, as the nurses were explaining it, I started to cry. And when I say cry, I mean keen, which means to wail in grief. I hadn’t cried in fear like that in years—some displaced part of me not wanting to believe I was mortal, that instead of being on the trail or even at my desk, I was going to be in pain and in mystery.

The nurses—they were so lovely and comforting and amazing. One, Renee, would follow me through my breast cancer treatment and we still talk once a week. I had to slow down and breathe and allow them to guide me into the procedure. Which, thankfully, was done by a tall radiologist who looked more like a professional athlete.

“I know this is painful,” he said, “I’m sorry, I really am.” I had regained myself, even joked about my histrionics. “You’re good,” the doctor said. “It’s scary.”

“I can run marathons, but I’m terrified of anything else,” I said. “I’m a baby.”

“What marathons? My wife and I are getting ready for an ultra.”

Running, doing it, talking about it. It always soothes me.

Even as he said, “I think what you have here is a little tiny cancer, and we can take care of it and you’re going to be OK—back to running,”—I knew I had a journey—a word any cancer survivor grows to hate—ahead of me.