You can’t interact with someone without being asked you are
doing. It is the hallmark of any human-to-human interaction, at least in the Midwest. I’ve started being pretty honest, because it is easier and feels better
than lying. Most of the time this means that I answer by saying, “I’m ok,” at
which time it becomes abundantly clear how remarkably unaccustomed we are to honesty and what a
burden that is for the person asking. They want to say something else, make it
better, hear me say, “good” or “well.” And I get it. In some measure I feel
guilty for my answer, for putting this on them. My family does it, my
friends, and the doctors do it. But here’s where I am with this: it’s cancer
and the full force of it is hitting me square between the eyes right now. I do
not feel powerful and resilient and tough. I also do not feel totally
despondent or lost in the woes of wondering why
me? I actually don’t ask that particular question at all. Aside from being,
beyond measure, the most frustrating and unanswerable question I could ask, I honestly haven’t thought
it, though books and message boards and websites and doctors and people who don’t
know me all that well keep insisting that I must
be asking it. My family sets about asking it for me and then answering with
poorly formed religious arguments lacking any logical composition or form. God gave you the insurance to be able to
deal with the cancer, followed by a slapping of hands. Done. Answered. God gave this to you so you could learn
about love. While I’ve no doubt I will learn a great deal through this
process, this argument is the most infuriating because it seems to suggest that
I didn’t know much to begin with, that before The Diagnosis, I was a real
asshole and that only assholes get cancer and none of these things are true.
As I explained to my professor who said, “You must be experiencing a great deal
of terror and questioning why you. I mean, you’re smart and kind and have a lot
to offer. You don’t deserve it, so why you?” It struck me as a weird thing to say,
rife with projection because as I explained to him, “No. I haven’t been
concerned with why. Turns out, it just happens and no one deserves it. It’s not
like the only person before me to get cancer was Hitler or Pol Pot.” The
reality of the situation is that there are a great many things yet to be
learned and weighed, measured, calculated, considered, and decided. In the
meantime, while I wait, I am ok. And that’s ok. For now.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
tell me what to do
Some days you wake up and have a nice healthy breakfast, let the dogs out to find that your friend has left another lovely mason jar of flowers at your gate along with an adorable toddler art project.
Some days you wake up and can't keep a thought straight in your head and spend too much time criticizing the things you are not accomplishing to really feel capable of doing anything at all. On these days, you might spend couple hours weeping over photos of reconstructed breasts in your pajamas on the sofa. And this pity party might be interrupted by a man coming to take the for sale sign out of the yard next door blaring Rush Limbaugh "hateful things hateful things POPE Obama hateful things..." and it might make you angry enough to stand in your picture window and give him the evil eye like a total maniacal nut job until he finishes his quick work. And if that happens, you can't just resume the pity party. You have to start doing something else. Like showering and making coffee.
And trying to think coherently about yesterday's meeting with the surgeon.
The idea of choosing what kind of surgery to have is overwhelming - so overwhelming, in fact, that it is tempting to put it to a vote. What kind of surgery do you, my dear few readers, think I should have? Please leave your response and rationale in the comments. All suggestions welcome; treat this like a surgery caucus - everyone is a write-in.
I realize it isn't the case, but it feels like it is very possible to make the wrong choice. What if I pick lumpectomy and I should have had a mastectomy and it comes back? What if I pick mastectomy and really struggle with being left scarred because even the reconstruction scars are pretty rough? If I get a lumpectomy, I will need an annual mammogram (even though everyone has said they are poor tools for creating images of my breast tissue and that even my current 1.7cm tumor is barely visible in mammogram images) and mri, spaced every six months forever. Would it be comforting to know they were checking so frequently, that they'd find anything that might show up early and I would be safe? Or would it be frightening to have to check all the time, cancer looming, posing a perpetual threat of recurrence? I think I lean toward the latter.
I think the thing that scares me the most about surgery is that the extent of the operation and the recovery time and all of the consequences are up to me. While that could be empowering for some people, I am indecisive and hard on myself, so it just feels like a lot of pressure. Is a double mastectomy necessary? Am I being melodramatic and letting fear get the best of me? Is a lumpectomy enough? Is it going to come back NO MATTER WHAT I DO? The rational part of me knows that life will go on and be good and that whatever surgery I choose will be the one that is right for me, and the emotional side is interfering with a litany of (overblown?) fears and distractions that make it tough to even look at the numbers and weigh my odds with each option.
*known genes linked to breast cancer for which I am being tested.
___________________________________________________________________________________
*Update, 7.24: The decision has been made! (out of necessity after a second opinion and more serious diagnosis from U of M) I will have a mastectomy because there are three pre-cancerous lesions in three different places that need to be removed in addition to the known tumor which is twice the size we thought it was. This is a strange relief. Read more here.
Some days you wake up and can't keep a thought straight in your head and spend too much time criticizing the things you are not accomplishing to really feel capable of doing anything at all. On these days, you might spend couple hours weeping over photos of reconstructed breasts in your pajamas on the sofa. And this pity party might be interrupted by a man coming to take the for sale sign out of the yard next door blaring Rush Limbaugh "hateful things hateful things POPE Obama hateful things..." and it might make you angry enough to stand in your picture window and give him the evil eye like a total maniacal nut job until he finishes his quick work. And if that happens, you can't just resume the pity party. You have to start doing something else. Like showering and making coffee.
And trying to think coherently about yesterday's meeting with the surgeon.
The idea of choosing what kind of surgery to have is overwhelming - so overwhelming, in fact, that it is tempting to put it to a vote. What kind of surgery do you, my dear few readers, think I should have? Please leave your response and rationale in the comments. All suggestions welcome; treat this like a surgery caucus - everyone is a write-in.
Every time we've seen a new doctor, they've shared some basic information that the previous doctor should have, but did not. Example no. 1: When I saw the genetic counselor last week, she told me that the hormone therapy I'm supposed to have lasts for FIVE YEARS, which is all well and good in terms of my whole life, but dang! That's a long time and means no kids until I'm done which means babies in my mid to late 30s which means greater risk of breast cancer in addition to less safe pregnancy and more likely developmental problems for the baby. Example no. 2: Micropapillary means more aggressive cancer, which is what I have, which is the first piece of new information the surgeon shared with us yesterday. The second piece was that because of this aggressive nature, the likelihood that I'll be advised to undergo chemo is high. Then, of course, we talked about surgical options but since I'm still waiting for the results of my genetic tests, I don't feel like the most informed surgical decision yet. So we are waiting again. Here's what I'm thinking:
Do I have HBOC, BRCA1, BRCA2?*
No Yes
lumpectomy double mastectomy?
probably... maybe?
Fuck.
I realize it isn't the case, but it feels like it is very possible to make the wrong choice. What if I pick lumpectomy and I should have had a mastectomy and it comes back? What if I pick mastectomy and really struggle with being left scarred because even the reconstruction scars are pretty rough? If I get a lumpectomy, I will need an annual mammogram (even though everyone has said they are poor tools for creating images of my breast tissue and that even my current 1.7cm tumor is barely visible in mammogram images) and mri, spaced every six months forever. Would it be comforting to know they were checking so frequently, that they'd find anything that might show up early and I would be safe? Or would it be frightening to have to check all the time, cancer looming, posing a perpetual threat of recurrence? I think I lean toward the latter.
I think the thing that scares me the most about surgery is that the extent of the operation and the recovery time and all of the consequences are up to me. While that could be empowering for some people, I am indecisive and hard on myself, so it just feels like a lot of pressure. Is a double mastectomy necessary? Am I being melodramatic and letting fear get the best of me? Is a lumpectomy enough? Is it going to come back NO MATTER WHAT I DO? The rational part of me knows that life will go on and be good and that whatever surgery I choose will be the one that is right for me, and the emotional side is interfering with a litany of (overblown?) fears and distractions that make it tough to even look at the numbers and weigh my odds with each option.
*known genes linked to breast cancer for which I am being tested.
___________________________________________________________________________________
*Update, 7.24: The decision has been made! (out of necessity after a second opinion and more serious diagnosis from U of M) I will have a mastectomy because there are three pre-cancerous lesions in three different places that need to be removed in addition to the known tumor which is twice the size we thought it was. This is a strange relief. Read more here.
Friday, June 22, 2012
a very lucky patient
About eight months ago I was thrilled to be able to go to the dentist by purchasing a Groupon. The idea of having a regular family doctor seemed foreign. For me, medical care aside from dentistry coupons and Planned Parenthood seemed a distant dream until Jason got a new job that promised the most stunning set of benefits I'd ever imagined. We went to dinner the day the insurance came through and excitedly pored over the glimmering packet of benefits and lists of doctors we would be able to see with moderate co-pays. Jason got glasses and a physical, checked out a mysterious chest pain, and our concerns about his well-being were quickly allayed. Up until that point it seemed that if either of us had a health issue, it was him.
A few days after my initial meeting with our brand new family doctor - a serious and charming man who wears a lot of linen and has a bright smile - I was laying in bed poking around at my breast doing a perfunctory self-exam when I found a lump. I have done these self-exams since I first got my period. I think I used to do it because I was curious about the budding breast tissue and liked to pretend that I had breasts to examine. At some point it became a still-unnecessary, but good, health habit, so I kept it up. I pointed it out to Jason and we came to a general consensus, "Huh. Ask the doctor at the annual." I was a little uneasy about it, but mostly because it threatened to be a cyst or some other grossness. At the annual, the PA who did my exam ordered an ultrasound, said not to worry, and gave me a clean bill of reproductive health.
A week later at the ultrasound appointment, I lay on my back with my right breast covered in warm gel as a radiology nurse passed the probe (it's not really a probe, but that's what it is called - I looked it up) back and forth until she got a clear picture that made her face freeze. "I'm going to have the doctor look at this. I'll be right back."
"Why? What's wrong" I asked, as the emotional center in my brain screamed, MAYDAY! The only thing she said was that the lump wasn't fluid-filled and we would need a mammogram. "What does that mean?" maydaymaydaymayday. It turns out it meant that the lump was a tumor.
An aside on mammograms: It hurts. It hurts in a way that it doesn't seem like your breasts ever could hurt. The nurse tugs and lifts and pushes and smashes your breast onto the film plate, slips her hand out at the last moment while the upper plate comes down, then clamps it even tighter. As though it would be possible to do anything else, she tells you to hold still, then hold your breath. Each picture is taken fairly quickly, but they take multiple pictures.
Once the mammogram was done, a nurse walked me to a long, narrow room where a doctor sat in front of six monitors, each one showing a different view of the inside of my breast. She pointed to the lump- a dark, oblong mass in the middle of a network of fine white lines and cloud-like puffs of breast tissue. "I'd like to get a biopsy of the tumor." No one had said the word "tumor" yet, and the force of it hit me hard. "The nurse will take you back in the other room and get you scheduled." I don't think I said anything, or maybe that is just a fitting dramatization of the moment in my memory.
I scheduled an appointment for the biopsy a week from the date of the ultrasound against the urging of the scheduling nurse. It was the last week of school and I had students' projects and papers to grade, instruction and review to complete. They had final exams coming up and it seemed unfair to trust that precious instruction time to someone else. The biopsy waited. I cried as I walked to the car, texted Jason because I wasn't much for talking right then but the message didn't go through.
We went in for the biopsy on the afternoon of the second-to-last day of the school year. They called with the results Monday just half an hour after I got home from entering final grades, submitting book tallies and attendance reports.
"Sara, this is Joy from Dr. Dallas' office. We need to set up an appointment to go over the pathology report from your biopsy. Can you come in tomorrow at 10:40?" My heart has never raced so fast or fought so hard to leap out of my chest.
"Yes. What are the results?"
"Positive. We'll see you in the morning." And that was it. That was all she said.
A friend of mine recently said she wouldn't be interested in marriage until everyone could do it and her righteousness struck me and I felt a little like a traitor for being married. And now I am again on the privileged side of the road, and it doesn't feel good. Which is not to say I am not glad and grateful for the insurance that will not only save my life but mine and Jason's likely financial future among the middle class - indeed I am immensely grateful - it's just that it doesn't feel right, knowing that owing to little more than good fortune, I will come out of this on top and someone else will not. After all, it is the right to marriage that got me the insurance in the first place.
A few days after my initial meeting with our brand new family doctor - a serious and charming man who wears a lot of linen and has a bright smile - I was laying in bed poking around at my breast doing a perfunctory self-exam when I found a lump. I have done these self-exams since I first got my period. I think I used to do it because I was curious about the budding breast tissue and liked to pretend that I had breasts to examine. At some point it became a still-unnecessary, but good, health habit, so I kept it up. I pointed it out to Jason and we came to a general consensus, "Huh. Ask the doctor at the annual." I was a little uneasy about it, but mostly because it threatened to be a cyst or some other grossness. At the annual, the PA who did my exam ordered an ultrasound, said not to worry, and gave me a clean bill of reproductive health.
A week later at the ultrasound appointment, I lay on my back with my right breast covered in warm gel as a radiology nurse passed the probe (it's not really a probe, but that's what it is called - I looked it up) back and forth until she got a clear picture that made her face freeze. "I'm going to have the doctor look at this. I'll be right back."
"Why? What's wrong" I asked, as the emotional center in my brain screamed, MAYDAY! The only thing she said was that the lump wasn't fluid-filled and we would need a mammogram. "What does that mean?" maydaymaydaymayday. It turns out it meant that the lump was a tumor.
 |
| Add caption |
An aside on mammograms: It hurts. It hurts in a way that it doesn't seem like your breasts ever could hurt. The nurse tugs and lifts and pushes and smashes your breast onto the film plate, slips her hand out at the last moment while the upper plate comes down, then clamps it even tighter. As though it would be possible to do anything else, she tells you to hold still, then hold your breath. Each picture is taken fairly quickly, but they take multiple pictures.
Once the mammogram was done, a nurse walked me to a long, narrow room where a doctor sat in front of six monitors, each one showing a different view of the inside of my breast. She pointed to the lump- a dark, oblong mass in the middle of a network of fine white lines and cloud-like puffs of breast tissue. "I'd like to get a biopsy of the tumor." No one had said the word "tumor" yet, and the force of it hit me hard. "The nurse will take you back in the other room and get you scheduled." I don't think I said anything, or maybe that is just a fitting dramatization of the moment in my memory.
I scheduled an appointment for the biopsy a week from the date of the ultrasound against the urging of the scheduling nurse. It was the last week of school and I had students' projects and papers to grade, instruction and review to complete. They had final exams coming up and it seemed unfair to trust that precious instruction time to someone else. The biopsy waited. I cried as I walked to the car, texted Jason because I wasn't much for talking right then but the message didn't go through.
...
We went in for the biopsy on the afternoon of the second-to-last day of the school year. They called with the results Monday just half an hour after I got home from entering final grades, submitting book tallies and attendance reports.
"Sara, this is Joy from Dr. Dallas' office. We need to set up an appointment to go over the pathology report from your biopsy. Can you come in tomorrow at 10:40?" My heart has never raced so fast or fought so hard to leap out of my chest.
"Yes. What are the results?"
"Positive. We'll see you in the morning." And that was it. That was all she said.
...
In the span of a month I have gone from being thrilled to have one doctor to having at least seven, (radiologist, medical oncologist, fertility specialist, genetic counselor, surgeon, chemotherapy doctor, general practitioner) and at least five more than that have reviewed "my case," because I also have a case now. I am incredibly lucky to have insurance. I feel guilty for the privilege that it is and outraged because it shouldn't be. I am three times more likely to survive than a woman without insurance. I cannot even begin to wrap my head around that extreme injustice, or how very very close I am to being on the other side of that shitty dividing line. If Jason hadn't taken this crummy job, or if Joy hadn't taken the lump very seriously, or if I didn't do the exams women my age don't really need to do, or if, or if... We'd be looking a very different future. I wouldn't have gone to the doctor to have the lump looked at if we didn't have insurance; it's too expensive and the likelihood of me getting breast cancer at my age are less than 2% even if I am genetically predisposed. I've always believed in universal healthcare but had little personal experience from which to speak. A friend of mine recently said she wouldn't be interested in marriage until everyone could do it and her righteousness struck me and I felt a little like a traitor for being married. And now I am again on the privileged side of the road, and it doesn't feel good. Which is not to say I am not glad and grateful for the insurance that will not only save my life but mine and Jason's likely financial future among the middle class - indeed I am immensely grateful - it's just that it doesn't feel right, knowing that owing to little more than good fortune, I will come out of this on top and someone else will not. After all, it is the right to marriage that got me the insurance in the first place.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
the family
Mine is a family of prayers, though only in crisis. Otherwise they hold
lightly to the Catholicism with which we were all raised.
Now they are praying. Now they are offering to drive from Chicago just
to drop
an ancient bottle of holy water in my mailbox in case I "need it" before
my
meeting with the surgeon on Monday. It is all I can do not to say,
"bring me the water if
you need to," for it hasn’t
the least
bearing on my own peace of mind. There is kindness and fervor and desperation in these sudden prayers. Old habits die hard for a people
with few
coping mechanisms. So prayers it is. I’m sure dusty, cracked rosaries
have been
unearthed and that the requests for cancer-free biopsies are coming fast and furious. After all, What Else Can One Do? I don’t believe in the
prayers or the holy water, but I do believe in the love behind them. Between the husband, my family and my friends, it's a wonder my heart hasn't burst yet. In a
way this isn’t just my cancer anymore. I gave them a part in it and
it is
really all about whatever makes it easier. So pray if it
helps. But
me, I’ll be banking on science and love and gratitude.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
why waiting to talk to The Cancer Team is hard
A month ago we were laying bed deliberating if we should spend a few weeks driving across the country or vacationing in the Maldives, spending restful days in thatch hotels on stilts in cerulean water. Last night we lay in bed talking about what scares us most about cancer.
"Let's just go on vacation," I said. "The cancer will still be here when we get back." He didn't laugh; it wasn't funny.
Ten of the Scariest Things:
10. What if this is all very minor and over quickly and it turns out I'm being melodramatic and scaring people I care about for no good reason?
9. Maybe I'm not being rational or tough enough and I lack the appropriate business-like attitude to keep track of the bills and appointments and treatments and options and medications. For example, I have never updated my license plate tags on time and I guess at my taxes.
8. Maybe we will run out of money and we will feel the consequences of this and the crappy economy in which I am struggling to find full-time work that uses my degree forever and my husband will put off his ambitions because of me.
7. The mri scans are disconcerting and I have to go in today for another ultrasound and maybe another biopsy (though from the way the nurse was talking, I strongly suspect that by "maybe" she meant "certainly") and biopsies make my whole body get the weak-wrist feeling.
6. Cancer is a big burden to everyone around me.
5. Maybe they'll cut off my breast and it will be painful and maybe it will turn out that I am shallow and not strong.
4. If I have chemotherapy my hair will fall out and my mouth and insides will hurt and my body will turn into a billboard announcing, I HAVE CANCER! to the whole world.
3. If I have to have reconstructive surgery and/or treatments, it could interfere with my ability to start work in the Fall which really mucks up the plans the husband and I have made.
2. If I have chemotherapy I will instantly go through menopause which could make me infertile and we may not be able to postpone treatment for long enough to have eggs harvested so maybe I'll never get to be pregnant or give birth to a big-headed beautiful baby that I made with the love of my life.
1. I don't know anything yet.
I will make a list of things I am happy about and grateful for later, but right now I'm feeling much more frightened than gracious. I'm trying to channel my friend Sarah, who is the most gracious person I've ever met, but it's not working, and sometimes I think I'm allowed to feel like this.
"Let's just go on vacation," I said. "The cancer will still be here when we get back." He didn't laugh; it wasn't funny.
Ten of the Scariest Things:
10. What if this is all very minor and over quickly and it turns out I'm being melodramatic and scaring people I care about for no good reason?
9. Maybe I'm not being rational or tough enough and I lack the appropriate business-like attitude to keep track of the bills and appointments and treatments and options and medications. For example, I have never updated my license plate tags on time and I guess at my taxes.
8. Maybe we will run out of money and we will feel the consequences of this and the crappy economy in which I am struggling to find full-time work that uses my degree forever and my husband will put off his ambitions because of me.
7. The mri scans are disconcerting and I have to go in today for another ultrasound and maybe another biopsy (though from the way the nurse was talking, I strongly suspect that by "maybe" she meant "certainly") and biopsies make my whole body get the weak-wrist feeling.
6. Cancer is a big burden to everyone around me.
5. Maybe they'll cut off my breast and it will be painful and maybe it will turn out that I am shallow and not strong.
4. If I have chemotherapy my hair will fall out and my mouth and insides will hurt and my body will turn into a billboard announcing, I HAVE CANCER! to the whole world.
3. If I have to have reconstructive surgery and/or treatments, it could interfere with my ability to start work in the Fall which really mucks up the plans the husband and I have made.
2. If I have chemotherapy I will instantly go through menopause which could make me infertile and we may not be able to postpone treatment for long enough to have eggs harvested so maybe I'll never get to be pregnant or give birth to a big-headed beautiful baby that I made with the love of my life.
1. I don't know anything yet.
I will make a list of things I am happy about and grateful for later, but right now I'm feeling much more frightened than gracious. I'm trying to channel my friend Sarah, who is the most gracious person I've ever met, but it's not working, and sometimes I think I'm allowed to feel like this.
Monday, June 18, 2012
why i hate your shirt that says you love my tatas
Obviously this is about saving
|
I understand that it is meant to be funny, and indeed I have
a wonderful sense of humor about my cancer. I have no sense of humor, however,
about being degraded when I am at my most vulnerable. I am not dying, but my
life is at risk to some degree, and in the face of that threat, I’d rather not
be reminded that my worth in this culture is first as a woman (as opposed to
just as a person) and that that worth is largely determined by my body. Your
tatas shirt is a billboard; one that reminds me that survival may mean risking
my femininity by your standards, one that asserts that the thing to save is not
the woman, but the sexy source of the problem, and ultimately, one that
proclaims your ignorance.
*Disclaimer: Obviously, my two or three wonderful and generous readers, I'm not attacking you in this post, unless of course you have a tatas shirt, in which case, could you explain it to me?
*Disclaimer: Obviously, my two or three wonderful and generous readers, I'm not attacking you in this post, unless of course you have a tatas shirt, in which case, could you explain it to me?
Sunday, June 17, 2012
the mri
Something about waiting for the mri technician in a room separate from your husband - struggling to close an enormous robe that threatens to unleash your cancerous breast at any moment - at 10pm on a Friday night really drives home the fact that you have cancer. It's the loneliness of the place at that hour, the weird sense of desolation and urgency because these scans have to be done before the appointment with The Cancer Team on Wednesday. I'm sure it happens, but it certainly feels like no one goes to a doctor's appointment at 10pm unless there is a Serious Problem. For me, that Serious Problem is growing in my right breast. There are two things about it that persist in my brain, nagging sensations: 1. I feel fine. 2. I can feel the cancer. I can touch the furthest reaches of the tumor, the strange hardness of it, the new tail it seems to have grown that trails up toward my armpit where a lymph node is so solid and swollen that I can see it when my arm is at rest. I look at it a lot. There it is, this dangerous thing that I can't quite figure out how to digest. I am pretty sure it looks like a very large sperm.
Mostly I have felt fine, practical and reasonable, less frightened than those around me. And then there was the mri. I didn't know I'd have to have an iv. I hate needles, so as I lay on the bed, I wriggled my feet around, squeezed tight the washcloth the sweet nurse had given me, and talked and giggled nervously, incessantly, proclaimed my embarrassment but could not stop. She missed the vein or shot right through it, I'm not sure which. Either way it hurt and she patted my shoulder calmly and said, "I'm going to get someone to help," then ran to the door and yelled a little nervously, "Chad?!" Chad is a horrible name. He had a gross little mustache and I can only assume he spends his weekends in khaki shorts with plaid button-up shirts and straw fedoras frequenting the worst selection of bars our little town has to offer. He fixed the iv, and unbeknownst to me (I wouldn't look until she pulled it out), because I was headed into a huge magnet machine, the spike that was left in my arm was a flimsy plastic tube that curled and bent as it was removed. It looked organic, worm-like.
In order to get a clear picture of breasts in an mri, the patient is asked to lay face down on a platform like the one pictured here. It is significantly less pleasant than this model would have you believe. I have had an mri before and I trembled so much they had to redo half of the tests. I do not like small spaces, but resolved to be tough because, as a grown-ass woman, I can handle this sort of thing. And then the sounds start and the deafening thump and twang of the magnets at work made it feel like I was stuck beneath the floorboards of some evil kids' bad rave. I couldn't stop imagining horrific scenes of earrings and nose rings and metal implants being ripped out of people's bodies. I started to hyperventilate, but managed to calm myself a bit for fear of having to start all over. That's when it really struck me, as I lay face down, magnets and coils pounding all around me setting even my hair and the needle prick sites (is that the metal in my blood, yearning to fly out and cling to the walls of this machine?) abuzz. I am sick. I am sick and I am scared.
So I counted. Each time a new test was announced I started counting the seconds because everything else I tried to think of kept getting interrupted. At some point, I drifted in my counting and I remembered Louise Erdrich's story, St. Marie, "I was rippling gold. My breasts were bare and my nipples flashed and winked. Diamonds tipped them." I pictured the beach, sun glinting off of the water and my husband and dearest friends, one with her tiny daughter, out swimming in that big beautiful lake, tossing around huge numbers, jumping onto enormous 4s and 27s and 33s as they burst through the waves. And I counted them all until it was over.
Mostly I have felt fine, practical and reasonable, less frightened than those around me. And then there was the mri. I didn't know I'd have to have an iv. I hate needles, so as I lay on the bed, I wriggled my feet around, squeezed tight the washcloth the sweet nurse had given me, and talked and giggled nervously, incessantly, proclaimed my embarrassment but could not stop. She missed the vein or shot right through it, I'm not sure which. Either way it hurt and she patted my shoulder calmly and said, "I'm going to get someone to help," then ran to the door and yelled a little nervously, "Chad?!" Chad is a horrible name. He had a gross little mustache and I can only assume he spends his weekends in khaki shorts with plaid button-up shirts and straw fedoras frequenting the worst selection of bars our little town has to offer. He fixed the iv, and unbeknownst to me (I wouldn't look until she pulled it out), because I was headed into a huge magnet machine, the spike that was left in my arm was a flimsy plastic tube that curled and bent as it was removed. It looked organic, worm-like.
In order to get a clear picture of breasts in an mri, the patient is asked to lay face down on a platform like the one pictured here. It is significantly less pleasant than this model would have you believe. I have had an mri before and I trembled so much they had to redo half of the tests. I do not like small spaces, but resolved to be tough because, as a grown-ass woman, I can handle this sort of thing. And then the sounds start and the deafening thump and twang of the magnets at work made it feel like I was stuck beneath the floorboards of some evil kids' bad rave. I couldn't stop imagining horrific scenes of earrings and nose rings and metal implants being ripped out of people's bodies. I started to hyperventilate, but managed to calm myself a bit for fear of having to start all over. That's when it really struck me, as I lay face down, magnets and coils pounding all around me setting even my hair and the needle prick sites (is that the metal in my blood, yearning to fly out and cling to the walls of this machine?) abuzz. I am sick. I am sick and I am scared.So I counted. Each time a new test was announced I started counting the seconds because everything else I tried to think of kept getting interrupted. At some point, I drifted in my counting and I remembered Louise Erdrich's story, St. Marie, "I was rippling gold. My breasts were bare and my nipples flashed and winked. Diamonds tipped them." I pictured the beach, sun glinting off of the water and my husband and dearest friends, one with her tiny daughter, out swimming in that big beautiful lake, tossing around huge numbers, jumping onto enormous 4s and 27s and 33s as they burst through the waves. And I counted them all until it was over.
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