April 23, 2009 
I’ve always thought that certain parts of our military lives ought to come with their own private cheerleader. Farewells, overseas childbirths, those precious moments when you try to use your cash card at the commissary only to discover that Direct Deposit paid everyone else in the military except you. Those moments require some additional encouragement.
This was one of those moments. I was taking my clothes off at the Women’s Imaging Center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The week before I got one of those scary phone calls saying that the radiologist wanted additional views of my breast. I’ve heard that before, but usually the person in question was whistling and cheering while they said it. This caller had that noncommittal tone that techs get when they are trying not to give you bad news.
I tried not to think about that as I sat down in the waiting room. CNN blared down at frayed magazines. Two other women clutched their purses and talked about how they wished their married daughters would get pregnant.
“I have a daughter and I hope she does NOT get pregnant,” I said, barging into their conversation.
“How old is your daughter?” asked one lady, as if I were a welcome friend, not a wild, bra-less stranger wearing nothing but a pink paper napkin.
And, somehow, that was all it took. The three of us started doing the instant relationship-making thing that military wives automatically do, feeling around for common ground, making friends while there is time. One of the women asked where my husband was stationed and volunteered that her Marine was in Iraq. The other woman said her soldier had retired years and years ago. They talked about struggling to live on the economy in Germany.
As a worried-looking woman was led past us, the Marine wife leaned closer. “This place has an atmosphere, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, but I’d rather be here with other military wives than with anyone else,” I said.
The soldier’s wife laughed. “This is just one more damn thing for us, isn’t it?”
One more damn thing. Yeah, compared with moves and wars and always interviewing for a new job, lurking breast cancer was just One More Damn Thing for a military wife. It was just One More Damn Thing that you would find a way to handle because you had to handle it.
That was what I was thinking while getting the new mammogram and doing my own frantic version of the boobsquish dance. I kept thinking that maybe I didn’t need my own cheerleader for this particular moment. Maybe I just needed a cheer. A mantra. A morale booster.
I pictured that movie “Meatballs” in which Bill Murray has the campers chanting, “It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter!” We spouses could cheer, “One More Damn Thing! One More Damn Thing!” It would be an all-purpose cheer for us. good for 6 month deployments that extend to 16 months. Good for the fourth grade teacher that forgets to teach our kid math for an entire year. Good for the day you have to take the family dog to be put to sleep on your own because your service member is overseas.
Actually getting breast cancer would require something more, but for all that other stuff we could cheer: "One More Damn Thing! One More Damn Thing!" Maybe we spouses would text each other: OMDT. It wouldn’t be a bitter thing, either. It would be tinged with that bit of pride in having racked up the difficult, taken care of business, been all that. And other military spouses would get what we meant in a way that our civilian friends rarely do.
After the mammogram and ultrasound, the radiologists explained how they were pretty sure that whatever it was, it was not a tumor. Just to be certain, though, they were going to stick a six-inch long needle in my breast and run some kind of test. I looked at the needle and back at them. “You’re kidding, right?
“Nope.”
OMDT.