boob tube

During Thanksgiving weekend, I bought the 1st season of Beverly Hills, 90210 on DVD. Even though I was much too young to watch this show when it originally aired, I snuck in viewings when my parents weren't paying attention. I became a huge fan of the show, watching until the first year the kids from West Beverly were in college. Then, it stopped working for me. Shannen Doherty was gone. That was enough to get me to stop watching. (I had the Brenda doll, that's how much I loved her.)

So I've been watching the 1st season, reliving all those early episodes and even catching a few I had never seen before (Brandon was on a TV show?). I find myself connecting with Brenda all over again, and I'm even falling in love with Dylan McKay again too (I had the Dylan doll too). But this evening, while waiting for the Bears game to start, I found myself tearing up over an episode of 90210.

It was the one where Brenda finds a lump in her breast. And the whole scene was eerily similar to when I found a lump in my breast five years ago. It was even in the same spot! As I watched Brenda deal with the lump, not knowing if it was benign and having to undergo surgery to remove it, I started thinking about my own experience all over again. The day that I found the lump was the same day my sorority sister died of leukemia. I was terrified of what I might have. Like Brenda, I talked to my mom first before telling anyone else. But I was nowhere near as scared or worried as the folks on 90210. I'm not sure why. Maybe I was totally in denial that it could be something serious. My mom had had plenty of cysts in her breasts before; there was no reason why this couldn't be the same sort of thing.

An ultrasound revealed that the lump was nothing more than a fibroid adenoma, common among young women. I had it removed a few months later in a very simple surgery and, aside from a faint pink scar on the side of my left breast, I rarely think about it. I remind my friends to do self-exams and try to remember to do my own. But until that episode I watched today, I didn't realize how worried I (maybe) should have been.



*I apologize for the totally inappropriate title of this post, but I couldn't help myself.