"The greatest evil is physical pain." ~ Saint Augustine
For once, St. Augustine and I are in agreement. I went to the cancer center last week and was treated to the most intense physical pain I've ever experienced. Just having people manipulate your breasts and position your body in ways you otherwise thought impossible is difficult enough. I steel myself for the physical discomfort and emotional humiliation for my annual mammogram. I had no time to search for a bullet to chomp down on. I didn't even have any Jack Daniels on hand.
The first couple of slides were about what I expected, but then the perky radiology girl started twisting the hand crank. I wear a D cup bra...god help me. She managed to take all of that tissue and squish it down to about a quarter of an inch thick. "Let me know if it gets unbearable. We want to see everything, but we don't want to torture you," she said. She then decided that one of the breasts was incorrectly positioned, so she released the breast, had me lift up an arm, grab on to the other breast with the free hand and turned on the compression machine. (I have no idea what the actual name is, but this will do.) Then the dreaded hand crank. Once again, I was close to tears and I am not a crying kind of person. She proceeded to the right (unaffected) breast, found the threshold of exquisite pain and continued to crank. Having finished that, she said, "I'm going to let you have a little break while I go check with the doctor." I was feeling a bit more optimistic. I don't think I've ever had a mammogram that had to be redone immediately.
I did my best to cover as much of me as the flimsy little gown would allow. I sat down and waited to be released and sent on my way to the ultrasound test. Why I haven't come to realize that optimism is hardly ever rewarded is a mystery to me. I'm an upbeat kind of person. There's no way I could have survived my childhood without a remarkable ability to find the up side in virtually all situations. I'm steadfastly optimistic no matter what. The perky radiology girl came back and announced that we'd be taking a couple of slides over again. One of them didn't show enough of the muscles behind my breasts. I can't remember what was wrong with the other slide. The next thing I knew, she was at that fucking hand crank again, chirping at me about how much she didn't want to hurt me. The woman missed her calling...she should definitely look into the possibility of being a dominatrix.
There was so much fun on this trip that I find I have to divide it into manageable portions. Remembering too much too quickly is clearly not in my emotional best interests. I'm having breast pain from the memory alone. Furthermore, now I have to completely recalculate how many days that idiot W. has been in office. Shit.
America held hostage day 1389
Bushism of the day:
"It's going to be very important for the Iraqi authorities to reach out to those people and talk about a system that guarantees minority rights, and a system which says that for some the future is bright."
—Bush, speaking in Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2003
Website of the day: Public Citizen Health Resources
http://www.citizen.org/hrg/links/index.cfm
