0 doctors in the city

there’s what is perhaps best described as "a protrusion" on my chest. not a lump; not in the breast. but something has happened and there is an aspect of my body that was not there before.

 

i tell my mother about this a month ago, and she says, you know some bodies are just asymmetrical, and i say, but i’m 39, and i feel like i maybe, kinda would’ve noticed this by now.

 

the protrusion: it is 1.5 inches long and approximately 1 cm deep? wide? how does one describe distance from one's usual chest cavity? (full disclosure: i have not yet gotten out the measuring tape from miss pixie’s so all figures are approximate.)

 

the protrusion: again, it’s not in the breast tissue, and it feels like bone.

 

my aunt, the nurse, requests a tit pic and i oblige. quickly, she weighs in. it is probably inflammation.

 

she shares the tit pic with my uncle, the orthopedic. he weighs in; based on the location, above the breast tissue, maybe it is chondritis.

 

truly, never did i imagine this level of sexting with my relatives.

truly, never did i imagine that the step that follows sexting with my relatives would be a tele-visit with a doctor i've never met, wherein i repeatedly pull down my shirt. 

 

voluntarily, i reveal my silhouette on camera so the doctor can access whatever this is from afar.

two weeks later, debo, whose pandemic brain means she keeps forgetting i am an adult, calls up and says, YOU MUST SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THE DOCTOR NOW!!! 

she was so preoccupied waiting for the delivery of the glasses she ordered from warby parker a month ago that she has forgotten that i have already talked with a doctor and that that doctor referred me to another doctor, who will be seeing me either on-camera or IRL in two weeks time. 

we're feeling extra-summer season of 90210 right now. the drama's all a bit forced and lazy. 

everyone says it's probably nothing. i keep saying it's probably nothing, even as i sit with the reality that the primary symptom of whatever it is is a burning when i breathe. which is often. and which is especially awful in forward fold. 

this is, OF COURSE, the ideal time to start dating. obvi. 

because, due to the pandemic, it means one gets to have conversations about sanitation and exclusivity ludicrously early, paired with, due to past relationships with men, conversations about violent sex and betrayal, mixed with, due to the protrusion, conversations about what appears to be a casually raging ibruprofen addiction and an incredibly sexy non-breast tissue, bone-like business. 

for who among us is not turned on by that cocktail?! indeed.