I already knew this week was packed with medical stuff--three tests and one regular quarterly specialist visit. Then BAM! First one out of the gate added a whole new set of complications. More tests. More stuff to discuss with the same specialist. I'm not ready to panic or anything, but I am not looking forward to the particular test ordered.
Two and a half years ago, not long before I discovered the lump that indicated how far my cancer had developed undetected, I gave a friend of mine a ride to a breast biopsy. She doesn't handle outpatient procedures well, and needs more advanced sedation than they typically offer. (I took her for dental procedures twice for the same reason. She's kinda funny when she's loopy like that, and she knows I am amused by it.) I had never heard of the kind of biopsy she had. It never occurred to me such a thing existed. She had to lie face down on a table, propped on wedges that stopped at the rib cage, and continued after a gap to support the head. One's breasts then dangle into the gap, and are clamped similar to a mammogram. Then some kind of imaging (MRI, x-ray, etc) is used to guide a needle into the area of suspicion for the biopsy. I remember hearing all of this and thinking, holy crap, I am so glad I don't have to go through this. (Two months later, I was having an MRI in basically the same position, without the clamps or needles, to make sure the one kidney bean-sized tumor was all I had.)
My annual diagnostic mammogram was this morning. I expected it to be pretty easy. Yeah, sure. That's my luck. The half breast is fine. Scarring where they expect it. Nothing else of note. The tender area where underwires irritated me before I threw out all underwire bras seems to be just where a raft of lymph nodes are, and while normal, they just happen to be sensitive. But on the whole breast, there is something new. There is a series of small calcifications, and they want to get in there and check it out. Considering how unimpressed the specialists were with my thyroid and its calcified nodules, just little flecks of calcium in fatty tissue doesn't scare me much. Lying in the dangle position, waiting for a needle on the other hand...
I needed to get my mind off of it all, so I invited myself on the Mr's loop-around-Denver sort of errands. We stayed gone nearly all day, and I was pleasantly distracted. By the time we got home, storms had rolled in from the west, completely skipping our neighborhood, but dropping a little tornado just over the Weld County line. I was so tired I missed all the hullabaloo, not knowing about it until an hour later when I checked social media. Darn.
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