Splat

One of the things a person should do when they’re not doing anything else is look after one’s health. After a routine mammogram a few weeks ago, it was suggested that I have a needle biopsy to explore a cluster of calcium deposits that appeared in my left breast like a small constellation. “It could be something. It could be nothing. There’s only a 20% chance that it’s cancerous but let’s check it out.” Twenty percent!!!!???? That’s one in five! If one in five people were unemployed, we’d be closing the borders and declaring a national emergency! If one in five people were homeless, the streets would be impassable! If one in five married couples got divorced…! Okay, bad example. I agreed to the test.

I didn’t sleep very well the night before. At 3 a.m. I finally realized staring at a crossword puzzle wasn’t going to work its usual magic, so I put the laptop down, turned off the light and tossed until five when I must have dozed off. The alarm sounded at 7. I dragged myself into the shower because the instructions, left downstairs on my kitchen counter, said I shouldn’t wear deodorant, powder, or perfume. I threw on denim shorts and a tank-top & went downstairs to consult the rest of the instructions:
1. Wear loose, comfortable pants with an elastic band.
Back upstairs. Change shorts. Back downstairs. Read next instruction:
2. Wear a comfortable shirt that buttons.
Back upstairs. Change shirt. Back downstairs. Take morning pills.

I took the plethora of pills in my daily pill-sorter including the baby aspirin I was told to take when my heart started rattling around in my chest like a sneaker in the dryer, but that’s another story. (I wouldn’t know what day it was if it weren’t for that pill-sorter. One week, I accidentally started taking the pills from the beginning of the row and was completely stunned when Friday arrived on Tuesday!) Read the rest of the instructions:
3. Don’t take any aspirin.

I left my husband sitting in the waiting room. I was escorted to a room with a contraption that could only have been invented by the Marquis de Sade: an eight foot, concave table with a hole in the middle through which the breast would dangle like an udder or a punching bag. Images of dangling things flashed through my mind .

The technologist explained the procedure to me & I said “I wish I had taken a valium.”
“Oh, you could have,” she said comfortingly.
“I didn’t have any,” I hinted. She didn’t take the hint.

I got on the table, face down, and dropped my left breast into the hole. There was no indentation for anything like a face so I had to turn my head to the right and rest it on my right arm. My left arm had to stay at my side but I was able to wedge it under my left hip in a feeble attempt to alleviate the pressure of the edge of the hole on my rib. The small foam pad she wedged under me gave little comfort; anything thick enough to truly cushion would have lessened the droop factor. Once I was ‘comfortably’ positioned, two metal plates beneath the table grabbed my breast in a vise-like grip, pinning me to the table. Lovely. Okay all you veterans of mammograms; tell me you never imagined that breast going SPLAT as they flattened it like a pancake!

Novocain was administered like several bee stings and soon I couldn’t feel anything but the crick in my neck and the pain of the watch I had neglected to take off cutting into the wrist I had wedged under my hip. “Try not to move. It’ll be about 30 minutes.”

I breathed deeply, trying to imagine myself lying on a beach, a cool breeze blowing on my face. (There was a fan strategically placed right in front of my face.) Relax. Breathe; maybe I’ll fall asleep. DON’T! What if I wake up suddenly, jerk upright and rip my right breast off! Breathe. Relax…

“We’re inserting the probe now.” Wild fantasies of being left on the table like this, my breast in a vise, skewered into place, while everyone left for a fire drill. At one point, the nurse told me I would hear some sharp sounds as samples were grabbed and that I shouldn’t be startled. I imagined myself jumping, my breast exploding like something only Quentin Tarentino could portray. She held me gently as I willed myself to stay still. Someone else arrived. Elsie. They introduced me to her even though my head was fixed the other way.
“I think I’ve met you before,” I said. “Didn’t you do my intra-vaginal sonogram?”
“Yes!”
“Yeah, I know Elsie. We’ve been intimate”. That got a laugh. Everyone was no nice!
At some point I heard people leaving the room & I started to panic. “Is anybody there” I asked, afraid to turn my head. The comforting voice of the nurse assured me I was not alone and that it was almost over.
“Is that thing still in me?”
“Yes.”
I started to get antsy. What was “almost”? A minute? Thirty seconds? I started to panic. I needed to know.
“How much longer, SPECIFICALLY, until I can get out of this thing?!”
“About five minutes”.
More deep breathing, willing myself to stay calm. Finally the surgeon returned and told me they’d gotten a sufficient sample and that she would remove the probe. I felt her hand squeezing me even more, applying pressure to stop the bleeding. All I could think of was “Those poor cows!”

When it was all over, and I was released from captivity, I was escorted to the regular mammogram room for two more rounds of vise-like squeezing on my still numb breast.

Out in the hallway on the way back to the car my husband asked how it was. I said “Stressful”. He started to cry, “I was so upset!”