An ‘Urgent’ Mammogram (1)

An ‘Urgent’ Mammogram (1)

When we got back from the hospital appointments with the Oncologist and the Radiologist all I wanted to do was kick back and put beast cancer out of my mind for a few hours. The ‘options’ were all too confusing and I had a stress induced headache.

As is my habit, I checked for phone messages. I cannot leave a message unheard. There was one so I listened to it hoping it would be a new prospect, a client or a friend. It was neither. It was in fact, the hospital calling to tell me the date and time of my next meeting with the Oncologist. Also, of habit, I wrote down the information then deleted the message.

While I wanted them to leave me alone I also wanted answers so I called my GP and had a talk with Mary. I told her I needed an ‘urgent’ mammogram. She ‘poor deared’ me a bit and said she would get right on it.

When I hung up the phone I felt weary and teary and overwhelmed with a sense of failure, like I hadn’t made the passing grade on a math test. Mutant ninja ‘rogue’ cells still might be multiplying in my breast and I could only ever memorize the simplest of the multiplication tables. The one and the two times tables I learned by rote in elementary school. The rest of the tables I left to the imaginary trolls that lived inside my desk.

My mother always said that as a child I was easy to please and that I often kept myself happily occupied for hours at a stretch. That’s because I lived in my head. (I still do.) As for the trolls, well they lived inside my desk along with the various and sundry items I crammed into it along side my books and papers and pencils and rocks and sticks and candy and anything else I might have picked up on my walk to school.

More than once I had my desk up-ended and the contents dumped on the floor by a disgruntled teacher. I remember wanting desperately to have a neat and orderly desk, just like the other girls in my class, but I had as much success with neat and orderly as I had with math.

I’m sure some kids would pray for a miracle from God when they didn’t have their math homework done, or worse yet, had it all done but done all wrong. I prayed to the trolls in my desk. I imagined them using the stubby pencil ends and collected erasure bits to complete or correct my homework. I thought they were happy trolls. I thought if I thought hard enough they would do my bidding but they never did.

I would probably have learned more math if I had paid attention to what the teacher was teaching instead of wishing for troll miracles.

Mary called the next day. My ‘urgent’ mammogram would be on Friday of the next week. I ground my teeth. It would be after the following weekend before I would know the results. Waiting sucks. Waiting with no information sucks even more. Cancer sucks. Surgery sucks.

I reminded myself of the importance of visualization. I closed my eyes and tried to see my breast tissues free from mutant cells. I hadn’t thought of my trolls in a long time. But somehow, at this point, when I am supposed to be seeing clear creamy breast tissue, I see microscopic drunken trolls cavorting, unarmed and anything but dangerous around my scar tissue. I realize that they’ll never be able to protect me from mutant ninja cells. Finally, I cry.