How it became Now

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Last week I went to my chiropractor. To start you always lie on the table, which they have packed hydroculators so it is warm and toasty and you relax with the heat before she comes in and talks to you. As soon as I lay down I started to sob. I cried through the entire hour of treatment. And it wasn't because the massage on my arm and back hurt. I have started to cry about everything. Haiti, my bankrupt bank account, a line in the NYTimes science section. I am finally becoming un-hinged, un-glued. I am finally well enough to not have to be brave.

I am writing this, not so anyone reads it, but so that I remember later. So don't feel you have to go on...

Discovery

On a Saturday, Halloween to be exact, I felt a pain in my breast and on feeling myself up, I found a small lump. It felt like a sticky burr - the kind the dogs get in their fur. It was sticky and thorny in a way. C. could feel it as well. I remembered that I had spend the past couple of months occasionally thinking I had something in my bra and rearranging my right breast. It was the weekend and we had a poker party the next day. We must have made food, but I don't remember what everything was, I know I made a artichoke, olive lemon dip because P. asked me for the recipe later. I remember playing poker and thinking "I have breast cancer!" On Monday I called my doctor and was able to get an appointment that week. She told me not to worry and to go get a mammogram and a sonogram at the mammogram place. She also told me to have the mammo tech feel my lump so they knew what to get. The Mammogram place couldn't see me for 9 days. Waiting sucks. There was nothing C or I could do, there wasn't anything to really tell anyone, we didn't have info, but we could stress out. Which we did. My trapeze classes helped take my mind of it. But even hanging upside down I could be like "Oh, I have a lump in my breast."

Biopsy Number One
On the day of the mammogram, C worked from home in case something happened. I went in and asked the mammo tech if she wanted to feel the lump, she didn't but she gave me a sticker to put on my breast where the lump was - it had a little round ball of metal that would show up on the x-ray. When she was done I went into another little room where a Russian woman was going to do the sonogram. This sounds like a Cold War thriller. She was locked in a small room with a Russian who had a medical device. But she was nice, it was just that there were a lot of Russian women working there. She told me that my mammogram was negative. And here is where things could be quite different now. She put cold gel on the sonogram wand (I am now rather a sonogram expert and the temperature of the gel used indicates a class act) and looked at my right breast. She told me she didn't see anything. My first inclination was to jump up off the table and run out of the room - negative negative negative!!!!! They don't see anything.
But I didn't. Instead I asked her "Then what's that lump there?" and she blanched. She asked if I could feel something, and I said yes - right here, feel me up. So she put on latex gloves and felt me up. Then she re-did the sonogram. And then she told me - "The Doctor needs to see this, wait here while I get her." So the doctor comes in and rubs the sonogram wand on my breast and Hmms and then says "You need a biopsy. I need to call your doctor to see if she wants you to have a needle biopsy or a surgical biopsy, but we have a needle biopsy cancellation today so we can fit you in." This was insane to me since it didn't give me any information or choices. Of course I would want a needle biopsy today rather than wait for a more complex procedure that would leave scars. So I told her that she should tell my doctor that I was good with today and a needle. So my appointment was set for 1:00. I went home and told C. that something had happened and I would need her to drive me. Here's advice, don't drive yourself to a biopsy because they hurt and you will be driving home with an ice pack in your bra.
It takes two to tango and three to do a needle biopsy. I was there to lie down on my side like a low rent version of Goya's Maja Desnuda. The sonogram tech to manipulate the wand and the doctor who is going to stare at the sonogram screen to insert the needle and then the actual biopsy plungers that take your samples. The biopsy plungers used here was like being stabbed with an ice pick five times. There was a local anesthetic, but not enough. This was one of the times that I screamed. When done they put a little titanium marker down the needle and gave me another mammogram for marker placement. Then they handed me an ice pack for my bra and I toddled off onto the streets of Beverly Hills wishing I had had a martini before the procedure.