Here I am at The Breast Center at St. David’s, waiting for my annual mammogram.
I’ve been coming here for several years. In some ways, it’s nicer than the general imaging center where I used to get my exams. Instead of those awkward hospital gowns, we get real bathrobes with tie belts and pockets. We wait in a Women’s Lounge furnished with comfortable chairs. A round-faced woman with a brown ponytail is here ahead of me, sitting quietly. We nod, but don’t speak.
There are two changing rooms. I enter one and exchange my shirt and bra for a robe. Deposit personal belongings in locker #10 as assigned. Last time I was here, they gave me a wristband with a key. Now the locks are electronic; I have to punch a code on a keypad. It takes two tries to get the locker open.
This lounge used to have free tea and coffee, along with magazines to take a patient’s mind off the impending procedure. All that went away with COVID-19. There’s a TV mounted high on one wall, but it isn’t on today.
There are worse places to sit and wait. But I don’t like being here. I don’t suppose anyone does.
A technician comes for the round-faced woman. Other patients come and go, changing into robes or back into street clothes. A stocky woman with short gray hair. A tall, lanky gal in runner’s sandals. A classy blonde wearing a watch and multiple bracelets. We come in different sizes and shapes, but we’re all here for the same reason.
When my turn comes, they’ll take me to an examining room and ask me to slip off one sleeve of my robe. The technician will introduce herself so that she won’t be a complete stranger when she grabs my tit with both hands and positions it on the imaging plate. She’ll manipulate my shoulder and armpit, putting them where they won’t block the view, and then lower the compression plate until my breast is smashed between two hard surfaces. We’ll set up for two sets of pictures – one horizontal, one vertical – then repeat the whole process on the other side.
None of this is exactly fun, but it isn’t the main reason I hate this exam. The real reason is this: Every time I walk into this building, I face the possibility of having my life turned upside down.
It happens. On several occasions in the past 25 years, I’ve been called back for additional imaging. Twice, I’ve been sent for biopsies. I have a titanium clip to mark the spot where a suspicious calcium deposit was excised in 2008; an inch-long scar where a benign lump was removed several years before that.
None of those glitches turned out to be anything life-threatening. I’m lucky; I know it, and I have no right to whine. Who wouldn’t prefer a false alarm to a confirmed case of cancer?
Still, a false alarm doesn’t make for a happy day. When you get the call that says, “We need to take a closer look” … when they send you to a different waiting room because the radiologist wants to talk to you … when you’re at home biting your nails and awaiting biopsy results, you don’t yet know it’s a false alarm. And I always imagine the worst.
So I’m here today at the Breast Center, wishing all this would just go away. I remind myself that there’s no history of breast cancer in my family, that my last four mammograms came back normal. That even the ones that weren’t quite normal turned out to be nothing serious in the end.
Thoughts like this can help settle my nerves, but they aren’t helping now.
Let’s face it: if I knew for sure there was nothing to worry about, I wouldn’t be here, would I?
I’ve been coming here for several years. In some ways, it’s nicer than the general imaging center where I used to get my exams. Instead of those awkward hospital gowns, we get real bathrobes with tie belts and pockets. We wait in a Women’s Lounge furnished with comfortable chairs. A round-faced woman with a brown ponytail is here ahead of me, sitting quietly. We nod, but don’t speak.
There are two changing rooms. I enter one and exchange my shirt and bra for a robe. Deposit personal belongings in locker #10 as assigned. Last time I was here, they gave me a wristband with a key. Now the locks are electronic; I have to punch a code on a keypad. It takes two tries to get the locker open.
This lounge used to have free tea and coffee, along with magazines to take a patient’s mind off the impending procedure. All that went away with COVID-19. There’s a TV mounted high on one wall, but it isn’t on today.
There are worse places to sit and wait. But I don’t like being here. I don’t suppose anyone does.
A technician comes for the round-faced woman. Other patients come and go, changing into robes or back into street clothes. A stocky woman with short gray hair. A tall, lanky gal in runner’s sandals. A classy blonde wearing a watch and multiple bracelets. We come in different sizes and shapes, but we’re all here for the same reason.
When my turn comes, they’ll take me to an examining room and ask me to slip off one sleeve of my robe. The technician will introduce herself so that she won’t be a complete stranger when she grabs my tit with both hands and positions it on the imaging plate. She’ll manipulate my shoulder and armpit, putting them where they won’t block the view, and then lower the compression plate until my breast is smashed between two hard surfaces. We’ll set up for two sets of pictures – one horizontal, one vertical – then repeat the whole process on the other side.
None of this is exactly fun, but it isn’t the main reason I hate this exam. The real reason is this: Every time I walk into this building, I face the possibility of having my life turned upside down.
It happens. On several occasions in the past 25 years, I’ve been called back for additional imaging. Twice, I’ve been sent for biopsies. I have a titanium clip to mark the spot where a suspicious calcium deposit was excised in 2008; an inch-long scar where a benign lump was removed several years before that.
None of those glitches turned out to be anything life-threatening. I’m lucky; I know it, and I have no right to whine. Who wouldn’t prefer a false alarm to a confirmed case of cancer?
Still, a false alarm doesn’t make for a happy day. When you get the call that says, “We need to take a closer look” … when they send you to a different waiting room because the radiologist wants to talk to you … when you’re at home biting your nails and awaiting biopsy results, you don’t yet know it’s a false alarm. And I always imagine the worst.
So I’m here today at the Breast Center, wishing all this would just go away. I remind myself that there’s no history of breast cancer in my family, that my last four mammograms came back normal. That even the ones that weren’t quite normal turned out to be nothing serious in the end.
Thoughts like this can help settle my nerves, but they aren’t helping now.
Let’s face it: if I knew for sure there was nothing to worry about, I wouldn’t be here, would I?
