How we got here: Kris's account

Or, Cancer, an origin story.

Way back in December, Anna, who you now know, and I were playing together on the silks. We like to make new sequences together. In the process, I did a thing. And that thing did not feel great. I stopped doing that thing right away, and suggested to Anna that perhaps that was not the thing to do in that move.

Now you're wondering why I'm talking about silks when you're like wait, I thought we were talking about cancer. Yep, it's circuitous. And no, it's not because silks cause cancer.

So fast forward a month. That thing I did was still causing my right hip a lot of pain. Nothing seemed to be making it better. The fact that I kept training straps and silks was probably not helping, admittedly, but I am nothing if not stubborn.

I got in touch with my friend Beck who is an acupuncturist. I went to her once before with a shoulder injury and she fixed me in one go with a good stabbing so I thought let's try this! Plus, it was an excuse to hang out with my friend every Saturday. Beck is amazing at what she does.

After a load of visits though, Beck told it like it was: I needed to go get some imaging done. So I finally called my doctor. To be fair, I really do like my GP. And they managed to get me in the next day, which, if you're unfamiliar with health care in Los Angeles, is like a frickin miracle. 

That appointment just happened to be at a satellite spot downtown. Normally, I go to the main hospital here down the street, where every department is siloed off and has its own schedulers. On this day, I went to this little self-contained spot where I'd never been, and my doctor sent me for imaging of my leg, which happened just down the hall!

But while I was there, she said, hey, you are overdue for somethings. Let's get your labs done, and your mammogram. And they did! (She also sent me home with colon cancer screening. It was like the most productive few hours I'd had in months).  

I'd had my baseline mammo a couple of years ago and I was targeting every two years. I'm low risk, I said. No history, I said. All good!

So imagine my surprise when a few days later, they called me to mention an "architectural distortion" and that they wanted me to come back for more imaging. And then after that, they wanted a biopsy.

And the rest, as they say, is history.*

Clearly, the moral of the story is that if your hip hurts, you should get your mammo. And that, god help me, Beck may have saved my life. 

*hilarious addendum: I appreciate that MyChart in the patient portal updated with my information so I had my diagnosis before my doctor called me to tell me. My doc is great and cheerful and I really like her but it was just a bit of cognitive dissonance to have someone that chipper telling me that I had cancer.