It's been an anxious weekend, and entirely, entirely due to the BBP. Not one moment of the holiday weekend was without a sepia soaked edge of anxiety. On Friday I went for my first mammogram--and it was not a good experience.
I arrived a bit late and flustered, having wandered around 8th Avenue thinking it was Broadway (Columbus Circle always confuses me a bit), signed into the building and took the elevator up. The West Side Breast and Heightened Anxiety Clinic--perhaps not its real name--was on the 9th floor. There was a high dark red counter behind which two nurses sat, their heads visible only from the bottom lip up. I gave my insurance card, filled out the forms, and gave them back. Then I was called back up to the desk, asked if my mammo was diagnostic or baseline. I didn't know. They said that my doctor had felt a lump, and asked where it was.
I answered, and said that that is why she wrote "sonogram if necessary" on the paper, so we could get it checked out fully. They appeared somehow dissatisfied with this answer, and I returned to my seat for thirty minutes. I was called back up and given a questionnaire. I sat back down and looked at the couple opposite; the man was Hispanic, in his fifties. He wore sweatpants and a look of discomfort. His wife looked horribly underslept--or ill. She sat very still, her eyes closed and her hands crossed on her lap. They made me anxious, and I was relieved when she was called in by the technician. More time passed.
A middle-aged fire plug of a technician came out and called my name--she reiterated the question about diagnostic or first-time mammo--I answered. She asked if I'd used talcum powder, deodorant, perfume or lotion this morning. I said, nope. I was led to a small sock-shaped room where two women were sitting, one of them the weary woman from the front room. There was no eye contact. I took my clothes off, put on the robe, and had to carry my clothes with me in a bundle back to sit in the sock-shaped room with the women. No one spoke.
More time passed, and I bundled my clothes more tightly. The woman two chairs away from me moved her handbag so I couldn't reach it. There were pictures of rock stars on the walls, and small placards talking about the photographers. Fire Plug came back in, called my name, and we went to another room with a big stand-up machine. I was pressed into it closely, closely, my feet wedged in uncomfortably beneath it, and a big plastic guard above sticking into my face. Fire Plug started turning a lever and a plate came down down to painfully press my breast. Fire Plug kept turning the lever. . .kept turning it until I thought I would scream. Then she stepped back and told me to stand still--lower eyes, don't breathe.
This went on and on, and the disconcerting thing is that she kept taking images of the same breast, the right one. 4 times, each more painful than the last. She looked silently at the images, and, while I was standing there in my disarrayed robe, clutching my damn bundle of clothing like a fucking refugee, I asked, "Is everything all right?"
Sharply she replied, "I'm not a doctor!"
Oh, fine. Not feeling good, though. She said I shouldn't put my clothes back on, but go back to the sock-shaped room and wait for a doctor. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, have I quit goddamn drinking only to get a horrible terrifying life-threatening disease?? Oh God, Oh God.
Sat back down in the sock-room, and the lady moved her handbag even further away from me. After a while Fire Plug came in and said, "Your doctor's office is closed today. So just put on your clothes and go." I looked up at her, pale in my frightened refugee status, and waited for something more. Some word of explanation as to why I had been asked to wait for a doctor, why my own doctor had been called, what was up with the continued shots of the right breast. . .
I got nothing. Except that I'd know in one week.
As I walked out, a nurse called to me, "Don't forget to fill out your questionnaire!" And believe me, I filled it out.
Then I went straight to an AA meeting, where I met a lady who had had breast cancer, and who said that my experience used to be the norm when getting mammos--but wasn't any more. That next time I should ask for a different location, and make sure that I would walk out with the results. . .she gave me her card.
The weekend contained some heroic eating, much television watching, and epic levels of worry.
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