After my divorce, my life was in a bit of a shambles. I was setting up a new single-father household for myself and my 5 year old daughter. While I only had shared custody, I still needed bed-sets and dishes and all those little things to make a house a home. On top of this, I had also recently changed jobs.
Suffice to say I was taking care of things but I wasn't taking care of myself. I had been in the best shape of my life in the military - I used to be lean and fit. I weighed in at 175 pounds and was able to do 70 pushups and 100 sit-ups each in 2 minutes. I clocked the 2-mile run in just over 14 minutes. Now, in the early spring of 2000, I was a long way from either lean or fit. The stress from all my life changes helped my weight get up to 250 and I hadn't run in years.
When the dust began to settle around my life, I decided it was time for me to get back into shape. The company I worked for had a small fitness room - two treadmills, two stationary bikes, and a single 2-station weight machine and dumbbell stack. But most important, there were lockers and showers.
I started simple: at lunch time I would jog/walk three days a week and ride the stationary bike 2 days a week. Once I had built up endurance, I planned to run outside around the office complex or along one of the bay trails near the sports complex. I also planned to ride my bike to work - 12 miles each way. However, I knew it would be some time before I could do that and still function at work.
To motivate myself, I signed up for a 10k run in San Francisco in November. And to make sure I was ready for THAT I signed up for a 5k race in San Jose in August. I now had means and motive to get back into shape.
My plan started working perfectly. Five days a week, during lunch, I hustled to the gym, changed into shorts and tee shirt, and jumped on a treadmill or bike. After five weeks, I had dropped about 15 pounds and felt strong enough to take my game outside. I knew I wouldn't be setting any land-speed records, either jogging or biking, but as with the first 5-weeks my goal was to slowly build endurance - and maybe a little speed.
One day in March, when I came into the locker room after my run, my nipples began to hurt. Badly. As if they were being pinched in some vice. Being a man, I gritted my teeth and tried to power through the pain. I chalked it up to the sudden temperature change - running outside in 60 degree weather then coming into a warm building.
In the shower, I noticed my nipples were actually bleeding. This was a little disconcerting as I've never before bleed from my nipples - ever. But again, I chalked it up to temperature variation. Back at my desk the pain went away and I quickly forgot the whole thing. The next morning, I biked the 12 miles from home to work, as per my schedule and didn't have any issues in the shower either with pain or bleeding.
The following day, a run day, I again experienced both the pain and the bleeding. This became the pattern for the next few weeks, although the pain was beginning during the run now and not just after. Biking produced no issues; running at noon caused pain and bleeding. The difference in the 3rd and 4th weeks was that the temperature in California had improved so instead of jogging in low 60s temps, I was now jogging at noon in mid 70s weather. In the recesses of my mind, I could no longer blame it on temperature variations. I still thought it would pass eventually, but I was otherwise stumped.
Around this time I met a woman, a nurse, while helping a mutual friend move. Gina and I hit it off right away. After we got our friend moved, we all went out to dinner and Gina and I made plans to go out again. Soon we were spending a lot of time together - her at my place or me at hers. We both had children and exes but as luck would have it, our custody schedules mostly overlapped.
One night while at Gina's, she noticed the scabs around my nipples after a run day. (I'd gotten my weight down to about 200 at this point and wasn't ashamed to go sans shirt.)
"What the hell is this?" She asked.
"Oh," I said casually. "That's been happening when I run."
"Well then you're running wrong!"
"Funny." I replied. "No, they hurt when I run and then bleed in the shower."
"That's not right. What did the doctor say?"
"I haven't seen a doctor about it. It'll pass."
She had a look on her face that said, "Men are stupid." But what she actually said was, "Oh honey, you need to go get that checked out. My nipples don't bleed when I run."
"You really think it's that serious?" I hadn't given it much thought in a while, except when the pain starts, but as she was a nurse I figured she was the medical expert between the two of us. If she thought this was serious, I needed to also.
The next day, she made sure I called a local clinic and set up an appointment. My appointment was with a general practitioner, and I explained my symptoms when I made the appointment, but Gina was confident that I'd need to see a specialist - on breast cancer.
Sure enough the doctor I saw knew of no reason why my nipples would hurt and bleed. He gave me a number to call to make an appointment for a mammogram. I was a little embarrassed at first, but Gina wasn't treating it as a joke and her seriousness on the issue took a lot of the shame away.
The day after my first doctor visit, I called the number he gave me. "I was told by Dr. Johnson to call this number and make an appointment."
"Who is the appointment for?" The young woman on the phone asked.
"It's for me."
"No, who's coming in for the mammogram? Who is the patient?"
"It's for me," I replied again. "I'm the patient."
There was a pause on the phone of about 20 seconds before the young lady said, "You think this is funny? This is a big joke for you guys? Grow up!" And then she slammed the phone down ending the call.
I didn't know what to do, so I did nothing. Her reaction shocked me and made me feel embarrassed about the whole thing again. Two days later Gina asked, "When is your appointment? I'll go along if you want me to."
"I don't have an appointment. The girl hung up on me." I said. "She thought it was a joke."
"That bitch." Gina was upset. This was her profession too and this other woman just insulted nurses - indirectly. "Call right now and make an appointment. Men can get breast cancer too!"
So I called. It was a different woman this time; she sounded older. I asked for an appointment and without skipping a beat she asked me what time would be good for me to come in. We set a time for the following week. I was still experiencing pain and bleeding going on three months now.
I tend to make bad jokes when I'm scared or nervous. I first noticed it when I was run over by a drunk driver at age 16. Nobody in the ambulance was laughing but that didn't keep me from trying again. Now that I 'm older, I've learned to sense better when people don't think I'm being funny. After I'd stripped naked from the waist up for the mammogram, the nurse was struggling to position the x-ray machine and I said, "Too bad we didn't do this four months ago: I had bigger boobs then." She didn't laugh, so I shut up.
She squeezed as much nipple and flesh as she could into the device and clamped it down with stern instructions to "hold still." We took a couple of shots on each side and I was allowed to get dressed.
Out in the hall, she said, "We'll have the doctor look these over and you should hear from us in a couple of days, but from what I can see it looks clear."
"Clear as in…?"
"Well, I'm not a doctor so I can't say officially - I've been doing this for a long time though - but it doesn't look like you have cancer." She was all business. Warm; polite; but very professional. I could also hear in her voice that she was relieved for me.
A couple of days later the doctor called and told me that the x-rays were clear and there was no sign of cancer. I still had the original issue to deal with and made another appointment to go back to the first doctor. That appointment was a couple of weeks after the mammogram and by then the pain and bleeding had stopped (I was still running three times a week) just as mysteriously as it had started. Ten years later, it hasn't happened again and I still don't know what started it.
