Mammograms on the Horizon

My first post-cancer mammograms and breast exam are coming up next week.  They have me feeling a bit disconcerted.  Am I nervous?  Maybe, a little bit?  I am not nervous for the actual procedure, it's really not that terrible and rather quick.  I'm mostly afraid of how my heart will be racing while I sit in that little waiting area while the radiologist looks at my films.  What if the nurse comes back in and says, the doctor needs a couple more pictures or, heaven forbid, an ultrasound.  That would mean she sees something that shouldn't be there.

Then I think that can't happen.  I had surgery.  I did radiation to reduce the risk of a local recurrence, and I did freaking chemo on top of that.  Cancer is not allowed to come back and the chance of it coming back is very, very low for me.  I can't remember the exact numbers I was left with after all my treatments, but it was low.

Yet as I type this, inside I start to think, but it could happen.  It happens to other people, and there is no reason I am excluded from the pool.  It's the same thoughts I had last year.  I vividly remember chatting with Dawn as I waited for test results and both of us saying, I'm sure it will all be fine.  They say most breast lumps turn out to be nothing of concern.  I shouldn't worry...

And then I said, or maybe not.  Of all the women I know in my life, no one I'm really close to has had it.  Someone's going to get it.  The statistics say so (although I admit I didn't know the actual statistics).  But someone I know well is going to get breast cancer someday.  My mom?  An aunt?  A friend from high school?  College?  Dinner club?  Work?  Why not me?  I could be the one to get it, because someone is going to.  I think I felt like it would be easier to hear bad news if I was sort of prepared for it.  In the end I don't think it really made a difference.

So, basically I'm just trying to not think about next week too much.  I have no reason to think there might be a problem.  No lump like last year so even though this will be a diagnostic mammogram (I think they are diagnostic for at least the next couple years) it seems to me it's more of a screening.  I think what is hard to think about is that even though my risk is low at this point and I've heard breast cancer rarely comes back in the same or other breast, I know it can come back, and I feel like my risk was low in the first place, and it still happened anyway.  Life's a crap shoot... I think that's pretty much what it comes down to in the end.