We can now research our illnesses like never before. But whom do you trust, and where do you stop? Two women, one a cancer patient who took charge of her own drug research, the other a scientist who faced her own health crisis, show how they found their way.
Finding a Lump
The sun streamed into her hotel room as she stood before the mirror. Darryle Pollack brushed her hair and felt her heart clench like a fist as she watched the long red curls come out in great handfuls. She wondered how much more of this she could take.
"Losing my hair was worse than losing my breasts," she says. "I had waist-length, wavy, gorgeous thick hair. I loved my hair."
Pollack had made some big changes over the years to put her life in order. She'd quit her job as a television reporter in Los Angeles. She'd divorced and remarried and endured a night of terror during the earthquake of 1994, running barefoot over broken glass to rescue her two children. The newly combined family moved to a house in Carmel. After a difficult transition, things had settled down at last. She was doing marketing for her new husband's health-supplement distribution company. Life was good.
Then, one bright Friday morning just before the Fourth of July, Pollack was taking a shower, thinking about the busy weekend ahead, her son's 7th birthday party, and there it was. Just like that: a lumpy mass in her right breast, slick with soap beneath her index finger. Something inside her that didn't belong. Where had it come from? How long had it been there? She'd had a mammogram only eight months before.
She went to work, thinking, well, it's probably nothing, but it needs checking. She called the only mammography clinic she found in the phone book. To her surprise, they wouldn't see her without a doctor's order. It struck her as ridiculous. She'd moved to Carmel less than a year ago, and didn't have a doctor yet. She needed someone to look at this -- now.
Pollack went to a neighbor who was an orthopedic surgeon, and he ordered the test. Her son's party didn't give her much chance to worry that weekend. She went to the clinic Monday and thought it odd that they asked for a second film. Still, she felt no real sense of alarm. Only later that night, when she saw her neighbor standing at her front door with the film in his hand did she feel the fear, liquid and trembling, settle in her stomach.
