Our cell signal really blows here on the Rupert/Dorset line in Vermont. Usually I can text from the house, but not send or receive calls. We got a landline, but it’s new and most people don’t have the number yet.  My phone surprisingly rang the night before the biopsy and it was the Breast Health Navigator. The signal was OK, but I was afraid to move because I might lose it. She had called three times that week and left messages, but it never even rang or showed a missed call. She got out the words “Let me tell you what to expect tomorrow” and then the air compressor went off. Pete was working on the trim in the kitchen, and the compressor was in the bedroom so it wouldn’t scare the dogs because it is LOUD. So I’m shouting to the BHN to hang on, because I can’t move to turn it off because I’ll lose the signal. We are both laughing as the deafening noise went on and on. Finally, it turned off, and she began again. Then the call dropped. She texted me her number, and I called her back on the landline. Finally, she got to talk to me, then the dryer end cycle alarm screamed beside me, and it scared the shit out of both of us. I needed the moment of hilarity, because what she told me sobered me up pretty quickly.

My spot is way deep in my chest cavity, very difficult to locate. So, I was to have a stereotactic biopsy. That sounds like a cool techno dance club kind of thing, but in reality, it’s a table that has a hole in it. You stick your boob through this hole, and they squeeze it in a mammogram vise, then do the biopsy whilst looking at the mammogram. I looked it up on google images- here’s a decent representation

Except those bitches all look pretty serene, the one getting her boob squeezed and poked looks like she’s fixing to sing Beautiful Dreamer.

I then made the mistake of searching the term on a Facebook forum. The ladies there were posting about how horrific the experience was, and how they would never do it again without Valium or a Valium IV. Okey Dokey. I was to have neither of these things. I had a fairly sleepless night.

But I watch Vikings on the History Channel, and whenever something is going to be painful I always focus on the Blood Eagle.

When your enemy chose to kill you with the Blood Eagle, they peeled the muscle and skin off your back, chopped away your ribs with an ax, then took your lungs out and laid them daintily one on each side of your back, resembling an eagle’s wings. If you winced or cried out in pain, you didn’t get to go to Valhalla. So, compared with the Blood Eagle, almost anything else is a walk in the park, right?

I drove to Bennington by myself, I didn’t want to leave the dogs alone that long and I didn’t want Pete to see how freaked out I was. I was called from the waiting room by a nice older lady, who informed me that she and another woman were going to be there the whole time for me. What the hell was going to happen that I needed a support group present? She took me to a small room, and there was the machine. She asked me my name and date of birth (ever see Papillion with Steve McQueen? The part where they keep asking his name and inmate number over and over?) and what procedure I was there for. I know this is a routine line of questioning to make sure an appendicitis patient doesn’t end up with a breast biopsy, but it always makes me feel childish. I said “I’m going to stick my boob through a hole in that table and you’re going to stick a needle in it”. They looked taken aback from my non-Latin description of the activities, but nodded and asked which breast. “My right one”, I replied, which was the correct answer.

Now to mount the machine, and pop Pancho through (Pancho is my right breast, Lefty is my left). Then came the loading of Pancho and all the side-boob and armpit on that side into the mammogram machine. Sqqquuuuuueeeeeeeeezzzeee. The table then rose up like I was Frankenstein’s Monster, or maybe just a car. Then to hold my breath several times while mamms were taken. Now keep in mind, they don’t take your boob in and out of the vise. It took some doing to load Pancho and his nearest neighbors in just so, and we don’t want to do that over and over.

Then the radiologist comes in, I had met him earlier. He sees the set-up and the mamm photos and enthusiastically praises the ladies for getting everything just perfect. I pipe up from near the ceiling “I’d like some credit for my boob, please”. There is a pause, then they laugh. The radiologist says he’s going to numb me now, its going to feel like a bee sting, then burn for a moment but it’s very important that I don’t move. Bitch please, it feels like half my lung is in a vise, where am I going to go? He gives the shot, it stings but I lie perfectly still. He praises me for being so still. I say ” I have five tattoos, your needle doesn’t scare me”. Another round of uncomfortable laughter.

As they work on me, I stare at the sign on the wall that has a list of procedures they are supposed to do for optimal patient care. I make words from the letters in the title. They keep asking me to hold my breath to take more pictures. They stick the needle in, there’s a problem with the suction machine. They whisper. I ask what’d going on. They tell me the suction isn’t working. I tell them to get a soda straw from the cafeteria. More fiddling and whispering. More needle poking. They take the samples over as they get them out to look under a microscope to see if they got some of the spot. More needle poking. I feel it now, but I’m not going to tell them because I don’t want another shot. I think about the Blood Eagle. More needle. More microscoping. I lie there, boob in the vise and the vise in the hole and the hole down in the valley-o.

After about 35 minutes or more of a sustained mammogram with needle poking bonuses, they are done. I ask the doctor to see the samples. He seems pleased that I want to see them. He says I’m going to show them to you while you are still lying down in case you pass out. Alrighty then. He shows me a petri dish with what looks like yellow chicken fat with a bloody glob on one side. I tell them they have taken me down a whole cup size. Really, its about a half a tablespoon. It would take more than that to make me pass out. I’m fascinated with my own innards.

They tell me to sit up slowly, and I expect Count Rugen to be sitting nearby with a quill.

Instead, I look down and see that my eyeliner has smeared all over the pillowcase. I joke and tell them not to dare charge me for that pillowcase. The support lady asks me if I want some apple juice or a soda. Nah, I’m OK. She insists. I say OK, a ginger ale if you please. I drink it, then ride the table down and get up. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the towel dispenser. The eyeliner on the eye that was on the pillow has migrated down my face, making me look like a mad heroin addict. No wonder they insisted on the ginger ale. I berate the support lady, telling her how could she let me back on the street like that. She insists she was going to tell me after the mammogram. The WHAT? Oh, another mammogram, this one on a regular stand up machine. Poor Pancho and friends were smashed again another three times to make sure the titanium marker they inserted was in place. Jaysus wept. Blood Eagle Blood Eagle.

So, they taped up the hole where they stuck in the needles, I wiped the eyeliner off and drove home, eating the Cheez-it Grooves Zesty Ranch crackers and grape Fanta I had stashed in the car for an after torture snack.

Stay tuned for the next post, in which we find out what the spot really is!

 

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