The Breast of All Possible Worlds

Let me preface this post by stating that I'm absolutely fine - there's nothing wrong with me that years of intensive psychotherapy won't clear right up.

Yesterday I got a call from the Women's Imaging Center about my mammogram last Friday. There was a funny-looking spot (I'm paraphrasing - that probably isn't the technical term) in my right breast. They wanted me to come back for a follow-up as soon as possible. "I have appointments available tomorrow," the woman told me over the phone.

Well, the technician who did my mammogram last week did say that callbacks are extremely common, especially with first mammograms. So I didn't freak. I made my appointment for today and didn't lose any sleep over it.

This one was a little more uncomfortable, but not too bad. The technician squeezed me a little tighter. It still isn't painful - just awkward - until they send you to the inside waiting room.

This may be the most surreal experience I've ever had. I'm wearing my jeans, but am topless other than a loose cotton cape over my shoulders which snaps at the neck and just meets the requirements of basic decency, if I'm careful. My shirt and bra, purse, phone and keys are clutched ineffectually to my chest. I'm shown into a room with six other identically outfitted women watching E!. They look up and smile wanly in greeting as I am ushered in. "Just sit here for a bit," says the technician, "and I'll show your films to the doctor and see what he says."

Ah, the almighty doctor. Do you know, I never saw this person? The lab bustles with young, attractive, healthy, cheerful female technicians, taking X-rays, performing ultrasounds, and reassuring patients. I picture the doctor as the lone male in the building, alone in his dark lair, being fed lab results by his minions. Meanwhile, back on E!, Kid Rock dispenses advice on picking up girls. (Win over the ugliest one in the group, and you're in!)

"Come on back again," says the technician to me after a space of several minutes. "The doctor wants me to get a couple more angles." So she does a "roll" shot, twisting my breast slightly under the clamp before photographing it, then a straight profile. The profile is difficult because the other breast, there's just no way to get around this, is ridiculously in the way. I hold it down and back while the technician lifts my right breast into place and tries to get the clamp secured before it can fall back down again, resulting in a highly amusing slapping sound. We both start giggling. SO not sexy.

Two more shots later, and I'm sent back into the waiting room, where Oprah has adopted a puppy and brought it onto the show and her audience goes completely ape shit. I've never seen Oprah's show before, but I've seen parodies of it on Saturday Night Live, which I never thought were very funny because they were so over the top. It turns out they weren't.

I wanted to have gone home by now. What was the big deal? My first mammogram was supposedly normal; there was some little area they needed a closer look at, and now they've had their closer look. So why am I still here? Traffic's going to be a bitch, coming home... Then the technician beckons me out of the room to tell me that the doctor still isn't satisfied and has ordered an ultrasound. It'll be a while; the line is long.

So I go back to my seat, but now I'm feeling frightened. Why so many tests? There are boxes of tissue on the end tables in the waiting room. Women cope with very bad news in this place. Oprah is going on about how, for the first time in nine years of publication, someone besides herself is on the cover of the April 2009 issue of O Magazine: and the lucky lady is Michelle Obama! (I can only imagine this must be the highlight of Michelle's life, don't you think?) Of course, Oprah is on the cover with her, because come on, let's not take complete leave of our senses here.

I'm not looking at the TV, though my theory is that they're showing us Oprah just so death won't seem so terrible. I'm thinking about heavy stuff. Could this actually be it? Cancer? What really is the value of my life? I may be the family breadwinner, but even with medical insurance, cancer treatment is insanely costly, and if we're doing a cost-benefit analysis...

My phone rings, interrupting this morbid reverie. "Are you still there? Katie needs to be picked up from school," says Jim, "aren't you about done yet?"

"I don't think so," I say, sniffling, "they've taken a bunch of pictures and need to do more tests. I don't know when I'll ever get out of here."

"Well, just call when you do. Hopefully it won't be too late to pick up Katie," he says with mild annoyance, and we hang up; he hasn't asked what the deal is with the follow-up appointment, or how things are going, but it's very inconvenient for me to be hogging the car at this time of day.

An interminable period later, there's an ultrasound, which of course isn't uncomfortable at all, but it seems to me (now in full hypochondriac mode) that the technician lingers for a long time over one particular spot. When she finishes, she tells me to lie down in the darkened room and just relax. "I'll take this to the doctor," she says, "and see if I found what he wanted me to get, or if he needs more images. It'll be just a few minutes."

"Did you see anything?" I asked.

"Was this your first mammogram?" she responds; "this is really, really common. I didn't see anything big. A few little things that are probably nothing. Don't worry!" She steps out, closing the door behind her.

And five minutes later, she's back, flipping on the lights and informing me cheerily that the doctor reviewed the tape and there's nothing wrong at all, just perfectly normal fibrous tissue showing up on the X-rays. "Just keep doing your breast exams and annual mammograms, and have a good weekend!" she tells me. And she leaves the room, and I get dressed, and go pick up Katie (who anxiously demands to know if I am all right) and go home.

Is it going to be like this every time?

Mammal, Mammal

Okay, I am now officially pissed off at all those emails that go around telling you how horrible and painful and nightmarish mammograms are. Do you know, I put my first one off for about four years, just because there were so many horror stories and I dreaded it so much? Did you know that, according to the technician, this is actually quite common and often causes cancer to be detected much later than it could have been? All because somebody had to write up a hilarious email telling you it's like getting your girls slammed in a car door or clinched in a vise.

I won't have my results back for about a week, but from a preliminary glance at the films, the technician didn't think it was at all likely there would be any questions. "Follow-ups are particularly common with first mammograms," she told me before we got started, "so don't be alarmed if you get a call back to come in and get checked out some more. It's just that since this is your first, we don't have anything to compare it to." But after we were done and she looked the pictures over, she didn't think there was anything that looked even remotely questionable.

IT DID NOT HURT, people. It was at worst mildly uncomfortable and a little awkward, standing there, leaning forward in my high heels (you bet your sweet ass I wore heels for my mammogram!) with a breast squished in between a couple of flat surfaces. But it didn't get all that squished - not anything like what I'd heard. There was pressure, no pain. Ever had thrush? Oh my God. Now THAT'S pain. This? Piece of effing CAKE, I'm telling you.

Honestly, I should have known, because - I don't mean to bash my fellow women here - there really is a cultural tradition of acting like the physical travails of being female are simply unbearable. I know that menstruation (barring medical problems) is no big deal; PMS is irritating, but entirely manageable; having a period is messy and may bring a little cramping now and again; pregnancy is generally easy (I highly recommend getting plenty of exercise and a weekly chair massage to keep it this way); childbirth is hard work and hurts, yeah, but not so's you'd let somebody stick a NEEDLE into your SPINAL COLUMN, WTF?! So I really should have known the hoop-la over mammograms is just so much more exaggeration.

It's now over. The other awful thing that was causing me to be in so much pain that I figured what the hell, might as well go get the dreaded mammogram while we're at it, is also over. I refuse to hurt anymore, I'm sick of it. I don't have to and you can't make me.

Mammal power!

A Trip Down Mammary Lane

I did it: I called the clinic. I made the appointment. I am getting my first mammogram next Friday.

'Tis the season, apparently, for gritting your teeth and doing the things you need to do that really hurt.

I also took a certain teenaged daughter of mine, who shall remain nameless to protect her privacy, for her very first pelvic exam today. She probably dreaded it just as much as I am dreading my first mammogram, but I suspect I'm a lot nearer to being right. I scheduled her appointment with one of the practice's female doctors (my own OB/GYN, you may recall, is a delightful, fun-loving guy called "Buzz"), who was fortunately also young and cheerful, matter-of-fact and kind.

My daughter is about six months older than I was when my mom took me for my first pelvic exam, but not a jot more nervous. I had a dream about it the night before my appointment. "Look at this gorgeous spring weather!" exclaimed the doctor, after I'd finished changing into a stunning buttless sheath.* "What a shame to be cooped up indoors on a day like this! Let's go do your exam out on the lawn."

Right next to the street, too. Why didn't I at least dream somebody got into a car crash?

I had to make my appointment, though, because my IUD is about to expire. I'm not sure how I'll know when this happens. Maybe some sparks will shoot out, followed by a wisp of smoke; this could be either really cool or kind of embarrassing, depending on whether I'm in mixed company or not. Maybe it suddenly goes "ding!" and shoots out across the room - again, possibly in awkward circumstances. More likely, I'll be eyeing that really cute waiter at Green Pastures and suddenly find myself knocked up.

Whatever the case, I need to go see Buzz to have the matter looked into (hee!), but I can't go see him until after I get the mammogram, because last time he lectured me very sternly for not having done it yet, and beat me about the knees with his clipboard, too. Buzz takes my health very seriously.

I guess somebody has to. At least my daughter is okay.

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*Band name! Or album name - or something.

Let's Get Metaphysical

I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with this mortal shit.* I've decided, upon careful reflection, that I'd rather be a never-ending pulse of disembodied glowing energy. Who's with me?

Well, you have to come with me. Being immortal wouldn't be any fun at all if you had to watch everyone you love die. You have to put up with too much of that being mortal; if you lived forever it would be completely unbearable.

Bodies are just a mess. Things go wrong, they fall apart; and frankly I'm starting to suspect sabotage. How can such a fundamentally friendly, nurturing creature as a female breast, for instance, suddenly go haywire and kill you? (You, here, referring to the person it's attached to - I'm thinking of cancer, not suggesting that breasts routinely go off on transportational killing sprees, though technically I suppose mine could smother people if they really wanted to. But no. They are friendly.)

(For now.)

It's an infinitesimally small thing on any grand scale, or a tiny scale for that matter, but there's something wrong with the calf muscle of my left leg. I had trouble with it last year, too, but it got better and I forgot about it. But today after work, as I was hurrying across Riverside, something suddenly went SNAP like a rubber band being pulled across a peg and it hurts like a sonofabitch and just for the moment I can't walk.

So basically I've just had it with bodies. What are they good for? I haven't had any serious fun with mine in ages anyway. Can't we all just become everlasting orbs of celestial light already? Like, yesterday?

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*That sounds familiar. Isn't that the first line of some famous Shakespeare soliloquy?