dynamic elf

As someone with a rather rocky family health history, I generally lean towards extra testing and doctor visits whenever there's a question. And having recently turned 40, the time came to Talk To My Doctor About Mammograms.

Now I do also like to do my research on stuff when possible, and I wasn't entirely sold on mammograms (see this article for a rundown of why). So at my checkup last year, I chatted with my doctor and thought she had recommended not doing it. But then the question came up again this year and she said, basically: let's go with yes. So I did! I didn't have strong feelings against it personally, just mild ones at a policy level, so I figured, what harm can it do? I understood the risk of false positives.

Narrator voice: she did not understand the risk.

So I went to my appointment, had my boobs squished (ow!), had friendly comments from the technician about how perky my breasts were (whee!), and went on my merry way to work, determined to not go back the next year.

Later, in a meeting with my boss, my wrist kept buzzing.

Hey, look, it's a phone call from a number I don't recognize! [IGNORE]
They're calling again! [IGNORE]
ANOTHER call? Give up already! [IGNORE]
OK fine, grrrrr, I'll go answer. I do- and they've found an abnormality, they say. I need to come back for an ultrasound ASAP, they say. We schedule it for the following Monday. I try to be chill - this is literally the risk I had read about extensively, obviously I'm cool and prepared, and the shakes that I have that night are totally unrelated.

I spend the next three days obsessively reading about breast cancer and feeling my breasts. I can't find the lump. I am fully prepared to go to my ultrasound and laugh off the negative result I get and still not go back for another mammogram for a decade.

I decide to take the whole day off as a sick day even though the appointment will be short. "I'll enjoy the time", I think. "That's it, it's just a good excuse for some down time."

I sleep a lot.

mek takes me out to get food at Forge and then brings me to my appointment, and I am getting less good at pretending it's all okay, but at least it will be over soon. They won't let me take a photo of the ultrasound to post to twitter and laughingly show everyone the tiny lump I have grown, and I feel slightly petulant until they explain to me that it isn't a cyst, it's tissue, and it's too small to feel but they need to take a biopsy of it and I kind of nod and the nice nurse who complimented my "sweet kicks" is now telling me how big it is (1.5cm, so roughly an olive pit) and how the biopsy works (a really big needle and some novocaine, just in your boob instead of your gums, and you get to watch it on the ultrasound cam!) and I'm smiling and nodding still and I understand but it all feels so surreal.

So now I get to wait a month. First I meet with the surgeon (she's a little fireball!, says the nurse), then the next day there's the biopsy, then a week later I meet with the surgeon again to learn and discuss the results.

At every step, I get a little bit further from reading medical studies and a little more scared. I no longer feel like I understand the risk of a false positive. I no longer intrinsically grasp that I almost certainly do not have cancer. "I'm not that stressed, it's just scary," I think to myself, and then the next day my back seizes up and I can't walk. And now I get to wait a month.

Even if it turns out that I do have breast cancer, and not a harmless fibroadenoma, it really doesn't look like it'd be the big scary type. I think the worst reasonable scenario is that I have the little lump removed and we're done. And if this happens, I am definitely not going to recommend to all of my just-turning-40 breast-having pals to get mammograms, because I still think it's a bad policy.

But right now, I gotta be honest, I'm a little scared.