When my dad died, I thought… now he’d know. I wanted help - I wanted them to save me. I’ve almost told so many people about this, be they friends or relatives or ex-partners. More than half of the results told me it was cancer. As with all things, you probably shouldn’t replace Google for a trip to the doctor. A bare handful of times, I’ve Googled the words “hard lump, jawline,” but had been too frightened to really, properly look at the results. I never wondered why the lump hadn’t changed. As time went on, I was almost surprised I hadn’t yet died. It’s only served to deepen my depression and my anxiety. I’d hide it away and brick up the wall and continue my life in the absolute certainty that I would die young - that one day, I’d wake up, and it would have developed, and I’d be told I didn’t have long left to live. I didn’t count on that.Īnd still, every time that lump would sneak its way to the forefront of my awareness, I’d push it down. I hoped someone would find it and tell me it was OK, that I didn’t have to worry and I wasn’t going to die. At the same time, I hoped someone would notice. In the majority of photos, I’d carefully pose so that the right side of my face is hidden. When I’d have dental x-rays, I’d live in fear they’d somehow see it in the area, and I would be found out. When partners placed their hands on my cheek, I’d flinch away when they got too close to the right side of my face. I would imagine it there almost every day, a stowaway, and my fingers would find their way to the area to poke and prod and wonder if anyone had noticed me doing so. Some days, it would be more painful than others, like I felt a network of nerves spreading outwards from my unwanted passenger. I would occasionally notice pain radiating from the area. When my father was diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2011, only to die four months later, my fear of my possible cancer only grew.
Perhaps I accepted it, albeit as much as the intervening years have been formed by my utter fear of death and mortality. It’s a thought that has carried me all this time: you’re going to die young.
At the same time, an insidious thought bloomed and spread in my mind like a weed. If I avoid it, I thought, then maybe it’ll go away. I locked it away and entombed it in the deepest part of me. However, where some might have told their parents immediately, I hid it. Back then, I was already exhibiting symptoms of anxiety, depression and avoidant personality disorder (AVPD). Of course this isn’t the case, but in my mind, the two couldn’t be more certain. I also noticed a buzzing sound from the phone’s keypad, and in a single horrifying moment, I equated the two to the then-still contemporary fear that cell phones could cause cancer.
Around then, I noticed it for the first time - hard, pea-sized, resting under the skin along my jaw bone. I first felt the lump in my late teens, around the time just about everyone had a Motorola Razr - you remember, I’m sure, the flip phone with the metal keypad. Saying that, there never is a “right time” to tell someone you think you might have cancer. Getting to this point has been a perfect storm of constant anxiety, a tendency to avoid anything which causes anxiety, and a case of it simply never being the “right time” to bring it up. Ever since then, I have hidden it from absolutely everyone I know - until today. Around 15 years ago, I found a lump on my jawline.
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