13 years later...the lump

No, it’s not the song from the Black Eyed Peas...my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps...it’s a bloody hernia! Next time Mum can move her own TV. She just had to order the largest television in the catalogue! It may very well have had a flat screen but there was nothing flat about the huge tube sticking out the back!

The next morning I moaned and groaned as I got out of bed, rubbing my groin to soothe the discomfort and there it was...the lump. It wasn’t really in my groin, more the top of my thigh.

That’s great, I thought, a hernia to add to the list.

The lump itself didn’t hurt one bit but my groin was like a tooth ache combined with ovulation pain that made me feel nauseous. I’d already been to the GP a couple of times concerning the groin pain. He thought it was an ovarian cyst but a scan in February ruled the cyst out. Apparently if the pain hadn’t gone after six weeks I was to go back and see him. Well the pain definitely hasn’t gone; in fact I’ve made it worse and given myself a hernia. He’s going to think I’m a stalker at this rate.

I left it for another week thinking maybe I hit my thigh at college, getting up from a massage couch. Those stupid catches got me every time and I always had bruises on my thighs. But the bruise didn’t come out and the lump didn’t go down so I booked the appointment for the GP.

As usual, I couldn’t see my doctor because he was on holiday or something and I couldn’t see the doctor that thought my groin pain was an ovarian cyst because he was fully booked, so it was going to be third time lucky and another G.P. to add his views.

April 14, 2008; I stroll in to the Medical Centre. This time the G.P is a woman. Weird, I don’t think I’ve ever been seen by a woman doctor. She’s gets me on the couch and I go through the spiel about the aching in the groin and how mums’ TV aggravated it and now I’ve got a hernia. Or that in fact, it was always a hernia and it’s got worse. That’s when the insult came:

‘I don’t think it’s a hernia, I think it’s a fatty lump’

Oh great. Not only am I overweight, feel fat the majority of the time, but now I’ve got fat deposits growing on my thighs! Makes sense though, I thought, because mum has fatty lumps on her legs. Oh well, my sister got Mums saggy eyelids, I suppose fatty lumps on my legs is only fair. It’s not as though I wear shorts anyway with the varicose vein on my calf.

‘I think the best thing to do is get you an appointment at the hospital and discuss where to go from here, considering your groin discomfort they will probably want to remove it.’

Typical! Here we go again. I can’t have a simple cold or tummy bug or even a simple fatty lump; it always leads to hospitalisation or surgery. What a shitter!

In my lifetime I’ve been hospitalised for
• Appendix - had to leave school camp for that to have surgery;
• Spasmodic Arteries causing blue toes - had to have week off work for that and a little hospital stay;
• Caesarean - didn’t mind that of course;
• the dodgy mole – well we’re getting to that story
• Pilonidal sinus on my spine - had to have time off work for that and surgery as well, but to be relieved from that pain was a blessing;
• Viral pneumonia - that lead to some freaky neurological disorder because of the encephalitis! That one really stuffed me up. The left side of my body was like I’d had a stroke and the right side was like Parkinson’s disease with an uncontrollable tremor. I had difficulty walking and talking because the damage to my brain affected my motor skills. This lasted for about a year, and that was only the first time it happened! The second time was worse with the fatigue and concentration side of things, especially reading and writing so I had to give up my fantastic job training as an Anaesthetic Technician. But that’s a whole other story!

I can’t afford to take any time off college at this time and just when I’m about to start a new job in a salon. The timing as usual was perfect...not!

‘What’s that from?’ she points to a scar two thirds the way down my thigh and I explained that it was just a mole, well actually it was a malignant melanoma, but it was removed 13 years ago.

‘Well in that case we better mark it urgent, just to be on the safe side’

She went on to say she still thought it was a fatty lump but because of its location and the fact that it was on the same leg as the mole was it was best to play safe. I didn’t give it any thought or make any link...until then!

From that moment on my mind started spinning. It can’t be the mole, that was thirteen years ago! They took it all out. They told me they got it all. My GP in New Zealand always checked my moles and examined my groin for lumps after the surgery for the first couple of years, besides, this lump wasn’t in my groin. It’s in my thigh!