Dear Petra

  The early march drizzle went straight to my bones in C Town on Saturday afternoon. We sat in a pub but I couldn't get warm, drank orange juice when I would have had beer. Spent the rest of the day, and Sunday in bed, sleeping against the sound of the TV,  weird short naps with vivid dreams. Monday morning I had to get up for my breast scan. Hospital appointments are so hard to get, if you cancel you risk the chance of never getting another one. Checked my temperature which was still high, got in the shower, delicately dressed, legs wobbly when the cab called at 8.15.

I'm seeing every thing through a fuzz, I'm removed slightly. The doctor calls me in, I'm the first patient on a Monday morning. The room is small with dusty sunlight pouring in though a single window. He tells me to take a seat. I look at the two make shift looking chairs, one looks like it should be in a lecture theatre, it has a board to rest your notes on attached to one arm; the other looks like it should be in a secondary school not a hospital.  I take the lecture theatre chair.

I explain to the doctor that I've been getting these pains, he tells me to take off my clothes, and he will examine me. I wonder why this doctor decided to become a breast specialist, I wonder if any women refuse to be examined by him. Now I notice through my flu-y blur that in the room there is also a couch and a large white machine with a monitor on the top. I lie on the couch, he prods my breast, and then scans the left one. The left one is the one that has been giving me pain. He tells me that every thing is fine, to get dressed and sit back down on the wonky chair.

He says: 'breasts are there for just one reason, and that is to feed babies, and yours have never reached their full potential.'

He then explained about the ovaries and hormone triggers to the breast every month..... and then says something about getting older, and some other stuff that I was too fuzzy to understand.

But then he says: 'The only way you are going to stop this is if you get pregnant and have a child.'

My eyes watering, but it's just the flu.

He says: 'This sort of pain is caused mainly in one breast and 90% of the time, its the left one.'   I get another cab home and go straight to bed, the infected wisdom tooth that I had last week has come back. I never used to get ill, I used to be fit and healthy and happy. I don't know what has come over me.

ms gunn