Happy BIOPSY Day

Happy BIOPSY Day


Sing-song Mary from my doctor’s office finally got back to me with the information on how the mammogram biopsy would work. It actually has a more technical name but since I’d gotten mammogram biopsy permanently etched in my brain it is forever how I will refer to the procedure. And, it is highly descriptive of the process. I was relieved to hear that I would get to sit in a moveable, lazy-boy kind of chair and would not have to stand during the ordeal.

Dave was equally glad to hear this. While he would have made a Herculean effort to hold me up it would probably have been him that fainted and then we would have needed Fred as well. I would go alone. He would drive me to the hospital then go shopping with our Shi Tzu, Casey.

We didn’t start the day on a good note. I am eternally early for meetings. I have a sales background. You never ask someone to give up their time so you can sell them something, (even if it is the best thing in the world for them) and then arrive late. Dave was a person salespeople called on in a previous life. (That’s how I met him. I was selling him computer supplies in my previous life. Before we went nuts and started working for ourselves. Self-unemployment is what we call it.)

I had been waiting and waiting for that BIOPSY day to come only so it could be over and done with. Mostly, two weeks zip by so fast you can’t catch them. But, when you’re waiting for a ‘procedure’ you don’t want to have the time goes really, really slowly. It also gives you lots and lots of time to walk around and pretend you are not thinking about cancer.

Dave had answered the phone when someone from the hospital called to give my appointment date. He was very good at getting the information, date, time and location within the hospital. He was even very good at writing it all down and offering to keep track of it so I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

I was up early on the big day, around four in the morning if I remember correctly. I watched bad TV shows for a bit then I washed up and was ready to go by six. As per instructions I left off deodorant and perfume. My appointment, as I knew to be, was for ten-thirty. They ask you to get there fifteen minutes early. It would take up to an hour to drive there. I also wanted to take the slow route, knowing my nerves would be bad, and stop for food on the way. So by my calculations we should have left at 8 that morning at the latest. At eight-thirty Dave was still in the bathroom having a ‘difficult’ poop.

I kept myself busy by packing the truck with everything Dave and Casey would need for the trip – dog treats, water and water bowl, leash, a couple of drinking boxes and an apple. (Dave is Type 2 Diabetic so we try to have emergency items on hand.) I took out his clothes and laid them on the bed to save the few extra minutes it would take him to get ready. I colour coordinated him so that he’d automatically put on the black slip-on shoes instead of his tie-up brown ones. I made teas for the to-go mugs and put them in the truck. I installed the Shi Tzu in the backseat of the Pathfinder.

And, I got more and more agitated. I piled agitation ontop of agitation having started the day in an agitated state. I smoked a lot, idiot, idiot, idiot.

The house was locked and we were just about to leave when Dave remembered that the paper he wrote everything down on was still in his office. So back up he went. I decided to have another cigarette while I waited for him. I envisioned a manic-fast highway drive without food. (Shit, we’d have to get food! Dave goes weird if he doesn’t have food with his pills and I get carsick.)

I finally got to yell at him when he raced out the driveway. “DON’T DRIVE LIKE A MADMAN! IF WE’RE LATE WE’RE LATE! MY NERVES CAN’T TAKE THIS SHIT!”

God, it felt good to yell so I did it some more. “Of ALL the DAYS to be LATE. I thought for sure you wouldn’t make us late TODAY. Don’t you KNOW my NERVES are FUCKED!!!”

“We won’t stop for food,” he said as his face turned red.

“OH, YES WE WILL!” I screamed once again. I don’t scream often and after my last roar I was screamed out and a little saner. “We have to stop Dave, or else you’ll go weird and I’ll throw up.”

We stopped at a Subway Sub store and got breakfast sandwiches to go. They tasted like cardboard wrapped around reconstituted eggs. Even the onions were tasteless but at least they were sustenance and neither of us would be sick.

Dave took the slow route but drove it really, really quickly. I knew he was upset. I also knew he knew he was wrong for being late. What I didn’t know is that when he looked at the appointment information he’d remembered it wrong. My appointment was for ten-fifteen and I needed to be there fifteen minutes earlier than that. Wisely, he didn’t share this information with me until we reached the hospital doors at precisely five minutes after ten. I had thought that miraculously I was early when I as actually five minutes late. Ten if your count the time it took me to walk through the hospital to the Imaging Department.

It really is a lovely Imaging department. Someone, or more probably, some committee had designed it to look like a hotel lobby. There were couches instead of hard steel chairs, wallpapered walls with sconce lights and the bathroom, the first thing I used when I got there, could have been found in the home of a friend.

The receptionist was lovely and looked me in the eyes when she went over my registration information. After that she pointed to a couch and told me to have a seat. I picked up a magazine but before I could open the cover a nurse came to get me.

I followed her down a couple of hallways like a condemned prisoner to the gallows. Nice comfy chairs and wallpapered walls did nothing to mollify my screeching nerves. In the change room she gave me a couple of those awful flimsy housecoaty things to put on, showed me where to leave my clothes and directed me to where I should wait.

A couple of hooks already had women’s clothes hanging from them. You could tell their ages by the arrangement of the layers. Obviously, a younger girl was in the waiting room as well. Her clothes were hung up in the order they came off with a cute sexy bra as the top piece. While I disrobed in the same order I hung everything up in the reverse with my bra invisible under my shirt and sweater.

Again, I barely sat down when a nurse came in and called my name. I followed the back of her blond head to the mammogram biopsy room. I felt like a two year old waiting instructions. “Have a seat.” She pointed to the oversized moveable, position switch-able clearly hospital chair. I sat.

She was very N.I.C.E., as in the Naturally Inclined to Care for Everyone that typifies many nurses. She told me in great detail how the procedure would go. Don’t tell me just do it I screamed in my head. I nodded along with the information hoping she’d see that I got it and get on with what she had to get on with. She had me sign a paper although for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what it was for.

The housecoaty things in this hospital have little fasteners on the shoulders so they can access an area without taking the whole garment off. In my case she accessed my right boob.

She manoeuvred the chair and the mammogram unit until she had me in the right position. The right position entailed me having my right breast flattened to point of bursting. My right arm was hanging over my head and my neck was at a really odd angle. That was a bit of a problem for me as I’d had whiplash years ago and had been having problems with it in the first place. She’d stuffed some foam padding down my back to help with the process. “It’s really important that you don’t move,” she said like it was an option.

Unlike other mammogram machines this one had metal side with a rectangular hole in it. This is the space she was trying to get a good angle on. When she thought she had the right spot she’d take an image of it that would show up on monitor that I could also see. We repositioned the breast, but not my arms or neck a couple of times, before she got the shot she was looking for.

Then, and only then, did she call the Doctor who would actually take the biopsies. Notice, it was plural. He’d take about four biopsies, and yes, he would be freezing my breast. At this point, I wanted him to freeze my neck. I do give her credit, the nurse tried to keep things light and to engage me in conversation but I wasn’t terribly chatty.

I didn’t even think I could find anything funny or humorous in the entire process until the Doctor finally managed to arrive. He said, and I quote, “So how are you today?”

‘Just fucking fantastic you asshole,’ that’s what I wanted to say, instead after I ascertained that he was completely serious and just being Canadian polite, I responded in kind. “I’m just fine,” I said in a most un-fine voice. I looked at the nurse and she winced appropriately. ‘I know this is uncomfortable and I’ll get this done as fast as possible’ would have been the right thing for the Doctor to say, but apparently, he’d gone to the information sharing class and not the real-world, don’t-be-an-asshole class instead.

The nurse had already told me the entire process but I guess he thought it would be a better idea if he told me what he was going to do himself. I know it was important to him to make sure I was fully informed but I didn’t want any more information! I wanted my neck back at a normal angle even more than I wanted my breast out of the machine. “Please, just do it and get it over with,” I pleaded, “My neck is killing me.”

It. Felt. Like. It. Took. Him. Forever. To. Do. Whatever. It. Was. He. Had. To. Do. To. Prepare. For. The. BIOPSY! The nurse turned my attention to the monitor. “See these little white crystal-like marks? Those are the areas we’re trying to capture. They are smaller than grains of sand. They are invisible to the naked eye. That’s why we have to be so accurate right now.” She held my hand while Dr. Canadian finally began his procedure.

“The freezing may hurt,” he said seriously, as though every minute in the ‘right’ position wasn’t painful.

Sure I felt pain in my breast but the pain in my neck overrode it. It felt like he was functioning in a different time zone than me. Or, maybe he just looked like he was moving in slow motion. It isn’t actually a needle they use. It is more the width of a pen nib and shoots exactly to the angle and depth that the mammogram shows. I felt the ping and pain as the first probe entered and sucked the tissue out of my breast. I really didn’t care that it hurt. I just wanted it over. I had hoped it would be four or five ping/pains in fast succession. But, no, it was ping/pain then put the tissue in the appropriately labelled vial. Do fifteen other things and then, and only then, do the next one.

I knew I was sounding unappreciative of our health care and God forbid that because I am lucky to live in a country where I can get this kind of care but I just want the whole thing over. I started counting. At four I looked at the nurse and asked, ‘Are we done?”

‘Not quite,” the Doctor answered instead of the nurse, “Just a few more.”

Exactly five more pings and pains and he was finally done. Nine little biopsied tissues floating in nine little vials of liquid later the freezing kicked in. The nurse let me out of my confines. She gave me a small bag of ice and told me to put it in my bra to reduce the swelling and bruising. I put it on my neck.

Dave was waiting for me in the parking lot. I was so relieved it was finally over and so hoping that this would be the end of this part of my life. The results would be negative. I would concentrate on our new venture, on making money for a change. I put the ice in my bra and sank into the seat of the truck. The day was finally over.

I asked Dave what he and the dog had done while I was in the Imaging Department.

“You won’t believe what we got!” he said in an unusually excited voice. He reached down and pulled a bag from the floor of the back seat. The bag held a tap for the sink in our partially renovated kitchen. “We got the perfect faucet for the sink. It’s worth at least two hundred dollars and I got it for thirty bucks! Isn’t it great? Wow, this was worth the trip wasn’t it?”

I couldn’t agree more. It’s a good thing that I really do love him.