It started like this. There was this thing called a pandemic. It was only going to last a few weeks, or maybe months. But then it didn't. And people put off routine screenings because why risk going into a hot bed of the rona for a routine screening. I made appointments, which were really hard to come by, for my annual mammogram. And then news got worse and I put it off longer. And then it became impossible to get an appointment--my HMO based healthcare provider who covers half of the county population only had one mammography machine available two-three days a week. And since in all of my years I've never had an issue, have no familial history, have normal risks factors (other than living in one of the counties with the highest rate of breast cancer in the country), I figured it could wait. Then things got busy. I went in one day for my appointment, but after waiting over a half hour with no clue when I was going to be seen, I left. I finally made an appointment for the day the sale of my house closed and less than a week before I was leaving town. I went in and had my scan and went home, ready to move on to the next thing.
That afternoon I received a call back. "We'd like you to have a diagnostic mammogram and an ultrasound. Can you come in the day after the holiday?" Sure. I had had my vaccine, there had been a lot of false positives due to lymph node enlargement. I figured they were just being safe. So the following Tuesday I went for the next two scans, not at all worried.
Now the facility where you go for this type of imaging is old and outdated and cramped. Pretty much third world type. Ironic since I have designed some kick-ass beautiful breast health centers. Where I was treated was not one of them.
I went in for the mammography portion of the program. There were five seats in the waiting room, and only three were available for sitting since the others were blocked off for social distancing. And, by the way, extraneous visitors were not allowed. Of course one woman brought her husband, who filled one of the chairs meant for the patients.
Several pictures later, after the radiologist kept asking for more, I asked the tech what she was looking for. She showed me. "Huh, that does look like it doesn't belong there," I thought to myself, "probably a cyst". Time to move on to the ultrasound. Well, that department is half-way across the hospital, through main corridors with patients, staff and materials. They give me a double gown and I carry my sorry bag of clothes and purse down the public hall, trying not to think about the fact I'm half dressed and feeling very vulnerable.
After what felt like a half-mile trek, I arrived at my destination (at least I was escorted) and prepped for the ultrasound. The tech did her thing. Then she called in the radiologist and she did her thing, staring intently at the screen and taking the ultrasound doppler across my breast and arm pit. Then she says that there is a suspicious mass and the only way to know for sure is to do a biopsy, they could do it right then or I could schedule it. I'm planning on leaving town the next day so I say "Do it".
The team scurried around, they brought in a nurse and collected supplies. A sachet of lavender was pinned to my gown and I was positioned for the biopsy. It wasn't horrible. A little numbing medicine for the breast to go along with my very numb brain. "This isn't happening, they just have to rule it out and I'll get on with my long awaited next chapter of my life," I was thinking. Five core samples were taken and I was bundled back up in my two gowns and walked back to mammography through the very public halls because they needed new pictures to be sure the clips were in the right place, or some such thing.
And back into that mammo waiting room I go with the husband of a patient still filling one of the three seats and other patients in the remaining seats, also looking a little shell shocked. There I stand, in a gown, holding an icepack to my breast and no where to sit after having five holes punched in me and there sits the big fat male, feeling entitled to a chair in a tiny room filled with women in gowns. What the actual fuck? Male entitlement at its finest. The staff then had me and another patient wait in the stereotactic biopsy treatment room on rolling office chairs for our next turn at the torture device. Finally I was called back into the scan room and had more pictures taken, with an additional few pictures for good measure and then told to get dressed and go home. And as I left, the entitled male was still occupying one of the few chairs available for patients.
For the record, I can understand why someone would want their husband or loved one with them. Hell, I wanted my husband with me too, except he's dead, so there's that. This man appeared oblivious to all that was going on around him and the discomfort of women who may have actually had breast cancer. He was an interloper. He could have waited 30 feet down the hall in the imaging waiting room, where no one is waiting in a gown and made everyone more comfortable. Also for the record, a state-of-the-art breast health center has an outer waiting room, where patients wait before gowning and where loved ones remain during the process, and an inner gowned waiting room for patients who have disrobed and wearing a thin hospital gown. I know this because I've designed more than one. Just my luck I am insured by the system with the least consideration of patient's dignity. Oh, and did I mention, COVID? Yes, no extraneous visitors. I think that is also a horrible way to go through this process, but we are in the middle of a pandemic and some pigs are not more equal than other pigs (Animal Farm reference).
I left the hospital and got in my car. I sent a text to my friend who is a 20 year survivor of Stage III breast cancer and told her I had a biopsy. Her response was "that's not good". And I responded, "Oh its nothing, just have to rule out this weird thing".
I went home and fell asleep for two hours, clinging to an ice pack that had since lost its cold. I was exhausted. The next morning I got up, packed up the car, picked up my friend and hit the road to the Midwest. This wasn't going to change my plans. It was nothing. I don't have cancer until someone tells me I have cancer.
Three days later, at a truck stop in Sydney Nebraska, I return a phone call to the breast care coordinator. "The biopsy came back positive for lobular carcinoma," she said. "But its tiny and you probably won't lose your breast and we can treat this." The next words out of my mouth were "What's next?" and she went on to describe a meeting with a surgeon which she set up for the next week. My friend and I looked at each other. "What the fuck." "I knew it, " I said. "I would say I have breast cancer to myself and there was no emotional reaction. I had a gut feeling, even though I kept trying to talk my way out of it."
I have cancer. Someone just told me I have cancer.
