Hi there! Me again. Your Fierce Tit friend who shares experiences about boobs and how to live a fierce life whether you have one fierce tit or two.
Today was mammogram day. If you’re a woman over 40, you know what that means: a little bit of inconvenience and some discomfort along with the potential for a lot of anxiety. But if you’ve had breast cancer, mammogram day is an event. It’s a reckoning. And it happens every year.
The hospital where I get my mammograms is just two and a half miles from my house. I need to get a run in and it’s a beautiful day. I put on my favorite one-shouldered sports bra and a tank top and take off at a jog. The sky is threatening rain but I choose not to believe it. Actually, bring on the rain: I’m either going to show up to my appointment slick with sweat or drenched in a downpour. I’m not sure which is better.
Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels.com
I choose to take the running path rather than the city streets, which adds a few minutes or so to my run, but there are fewer bodies to weave in between, which is welcome. I see a young man sitting at the edge of a lake with the full weight of his head resting on the bare shoulder of the girl next to him. There’s a forty of Modelo by their side. I see another man in a wheelchair with both knees in some kind of brace, as a woman adjusts something on the chair. It crosses my mind how often women care for men. It crosses my mind that I have often been the woman caring for the man.
I pass a male runner with a muscled chest and perky nipples that bounce gently to match his stride. I envy his symmetry.
Sweaty and hot, I make my way into the hospital. As always, when I enter the breast clinic, I’m given a questionnaire. The same questionnaire that I got last year, and the year before, and the year before. Have you had breast imaging done? When? Where? Have you had breast surgery? Were your results benign or malignant? When? Where? Chemotherapy? Radiation? Hormone therapy? When? When? When?
You know that friend (or partner) who tells you the same stories over and over, and it drives you crazy because you’re listening and thinking, “I was here the last time you told me, remember?” And what you’re really thinking is, “Don’t you see me?”
That’s how I feel every time I walk into the breast clinic. “Don’t you see me? I come here every year. I check off nearly every box on this list. In fact, I received all of these diagnoses and treatments at this very hospital. I’m a regular. I get shots down the hall every month. My medical records are all over your system. We’re on a first-name basis. Now stop asking me what date I had surgery!”
Maybe this is why I almost never wear a breast prosthesis when I visit the hospital. I figure there they see me. There they get me.
The questionnaire doesn’t get me though. Each time I visit, I get to relive every step of my diagnosis and treatment, as well as the false-alarm biopsy a few years later.
It’s like, “You’ve been walking around all this time thinking you’re ok, you’re healed. Not so. That entire myth could be busted today.”
My wait is not long. I’m taken back to the changing room and given a short pink gown that ties at the side. I like that they switched to short gowns that close in the front – much easier than the long ones that tie in the back. But the fact that they’re pink is a bit much. And mine won’t even close because one of the ties has come off.
It’s just right though – my gown is broken on one side, just like me.
In the changing room I’m grateful to find baby wipes (for wiping off deodorant/anti-perspirant). I take one and wipe the sweat off of my forehead, shoulders, back, and chest. I’m still really sweaty and red-faced. I look a mess. But that’s ok. I don’t need to dress up for a mammogram.
A sign in the changing room reminds me that I might be called back if my test results are not conclusive. It says that I might have to have a follow up ultrasound or MRI. But it tells me that 9 out of 10 women who are called back do not have cancer.
Interesting. It’s no comfort to me, since I’ve been the 1 out of 10. But it’s true that for most women this process produces more anxiety than diagnosis.
I still think that all of the screening is valid. For me it wasn’t screening that saved my life; it was knowing my body. But it was a mammogram that confirmed what my fingers knew, and for that I am grateful.
Each time I walk into a screening room with a mammogram tech, I wonder at what a funny job it is. You don’t just look at women’s breasts all day: you manipulate them. You prod and push and flatten and plump. You stand behind a screen in a windowless room and look at white-on-black images. You shove women up against the mammogram machine, their breasts, chests, and faces smushed up against the glass.
As usual, my tech is firm yet kind, and all business. She twists and tugs and flattens me and tells me to hold my breath, and we get all of the images in one take. It’s the first time that’s ever happened.
There are PSA’s in the room in the form of flyers that remind that “compression is care,” and that the amount of radiation I’m exposed to during this session is the same amount as on a cross-country flight. Obviously the women coming in have been researching mammograms, and have their reservations. They don’t like having their boobs squeezed and smooshed, and they’re concerned about radiation.
I just want my results so that I can leave my anxiety behind until my MRI in six months’ time. But no dice. Here’s my version of the conversation we had:
Tech: “You’ll get your results in seven days.”
Me: I stare at her for a moment. “I usually get them the same day. My doctor ordered a diagnostic mammogram.”
Tech: “Even if they ordered a diagnostic, in your case you get a screening mammogram. You only have a diagnostic mammogram for two years after your surgery. You’ll get your results in seven days.”
Me: “I won’t get the results the same day?”
Tech: (I’m paraphrasing) “You’re not special anymore. You have to wait like everyone else.”
This is the key difference between screening and diagnostic mammograms: with a diagnostic mammogram, a radiologist reviews the imaging and you receive a result while you wait at the clinic. This means that if you need follow up imaging, they can do it that same day. In fact, at my last visit, when my doctor ordered the mammogram, she told me she was ordering a diagnostic mammogram so that I did not have to wait a week for my results. Or make time to go back to the hospital.
Up until this point I did not realize what a blessing a diagnostic mammogram could be. You can imagine all the possible inconveniences that go along with returning to the hospital for more imaging: paying for parking. Traveling time to/from the hospital. Finding someone to drive you or watch your kids. Missing work. And then there’s the emotional cost of waiting a week to learn the result.
This is why the difference between screening mammograms and diagnostic mammograms matters.
I change out of the gown that doesn’t quite close and back into my sweaty sports bra and top. A few drops of rain fall on my arm as I walk away from the building. I start jogging home.
A woman walking with her partner does a double-take, and I see her eyes float just below my chin. I get it: my chest is like a train wreck. You don’t want to stare but you can’t look away. The first look is to notice the missing breast on my chest. The second look confirms it: “Did I really see that?” people wonder. I’d do it too. In fact, I do it too.
What we notice on others says much more about us than about those others. When I was bald from chemotherapy treatment, I constantly noticed other people’s hair. Now that I’m missing a boob, I check out a lot of boobs. I’m constantly counting: 1 or 2? 2 or 1? Most of the time I count to 2, but I’m still always looking for people like me. Rarely, very rarely, I find them.
What I notice in others is what I actually want for myself.
As I jog home slowly, my legs constantly on the edge of giving up, I see a woman leaning her head on the shoulder of a man wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt in the back of a pedicab. If the universe is always seeking balance, it has found it today.
There is help and there is support. And while seven days to wait might seem unfair, and I’ll be a bit salty if I have to return to the hospital again, I know that if I need more imaging that I have a community of fierce tit women to support me and hold me and I have knowledge and experience that will help me make more confident choices than I’ve made in the past.
With quite a few breaks to walk, I finally make my way home where this girl is waiting for me to take her on a walk of her own.
