More About My (Ugh) First Biopsy

Ok, so I’m trying to write about my biopsy experience, because I want you to know about it. But I don’t like writing about it. Inside my head, I am writing kicking and screaming.

I was sitting with my right breast smashed between the mammogram plates. This is probably an uncomfortable position for anyone. I remember having the mammogram performed on my left breast…the one without the tumor…and it didn’t feel terrible, but it wasn’t a lot of fun either. Having it done to my right breast was another story altogether.

The whole reason I even knew about my lump was that it was pressing against a nerve or something. It felt weird inside my breast. It felt, not painful…but creepy and unpleasant. I didn’t like having that breast touched at all, because it felt so yucky.

Being squeezed so tightly between those two plates immediately kicked those sensations up an octave or more. It still felt creepy and yucky and squeamishly awful. Now, all those feelings, in addition to being much louder, were joined by flat-out pain. I mean like an “ouch ouch ouch please stop it!” kind of pain. I mean like a cussing out loud angry kind of pain. I mean like a stubbing your naked toe on a cinder-block or hitting your thumb with a hammer kind of pain. With the final crank that pinned me there, tears just leaped from my face. I felt like my head was a lemon wedge being squeezed over a glass of ice water. On minute I was intact, and the next my face was all scrunched up and stinging juice was just squirting out of it. I know that sounds gross and weird, but I am trying to be really honest about how it felt and what happened.

The technicians were trying to be kind and thoughtful, I know they were. But, I don’t think they had any concept of why this was so painful for me, or why it might have been more painful for me than it is for most of their patients, whose lumps are in less sensitive areas. I felt like they just thought I was a big baby. This was probably my own projection. They really were trying to be sweet. I just felt like they didn’t have the information they would need to really understand what was going on for me. I guess I could have told them, except that I was too terrified to talk.

So there I was, in the undignified and vulnerable position of being topless in a room with fully dressed strangers. I had a blue cotton hospital gown kind of draped over my other shoulder at one point, but it had fallen off into my lap. I’ve been topless in front of strangers before, but I usually feel like I looked pretty good, and that makes it better. I didn’t feel like I looked very good with my poor breast smashed out flat in front of me and tears streaming down my face. At least it was just me and two other women, for the moment.

I’m going to interrupt this posting to give you some Feng Shui advice. When you are arranging your office, or living room, or any space where you spend a lot of time sitting…you should always position your primary chair so that you can see the door into the room clearly. If you have your back to the door, you will suffer from a deep and perhaps unconscious uneasiness, because someone could come in and sneak up on you at any moment. If the only good place for the chair is with its back to the door, you can remedy the situation by placing a mirror somewhere in front of the chair, affording you an easy view of the door behind you, and helping you to feel safe and relaxed. This is good advice and you should follow it when you are arranging your furniture.

I wish they’d known about it when they set up the mammogram room. I wish I’d brought a mirror and hung in it front of me. Then, I might have noticed when Dr. V, the radiologist who performed my biopsy, joined us in that little room.

I didn't hear the door open. Neither of the technician alerted me to his arrival. I didn’t know he was there at all, until I felt a pair of hands on my naked shoulders.

I guess he thought it was okay to come up behind me and touch me like that because, after all, he was my doctor whom I liked and trusted. It wasn’t like he was some skeevy guy, right? What he (and Dr. H, with his unsolicited hugs) don’t understand is…the only real difference between a man you trust and some skeevy guy, is that the skeevy guy surprises you with sudden, uninvited physical intimacies.

So, I’m sitting there half naked, embarrassed, trapped, crying and hurting. I’m trying not to move my body even a fraction of a millimeter because even the tiniest motion increases the pain in my breast. Suddenly, I’ve got Dr. V gripping my shoulders and peering over my shoulder to spout cheerful salutary comments into my ear. I’m not just praying he doesn’t jostle me, I’m chanting inside my head, “Please don’t touch me again, please don’t touch me again, please don’t touch me again!”

It wasn’t a great attitude to have towards someone who was about to start drilling into my body.