Every year since I turned 40, I've dutifully made an appointment to get a mammogram. Every year, I'd receive a report that said, essentially, "We think you're fine, but you have really dense breast tissue, so we can't tell with any degree of reliability whether there's something there we can't see." I used to get anxious about those reports until my primary care physician told me that many people have dense breasts and, more likely than not, I would be fine.
This year, a couple of days after the mammogram, I got a call from the Breast Center. "We need for you to come in and do another mammogram. You know that place we've been watching for the past several years? We just need to take a better look at it."
No. I did not know the "place they've been watching." Somehow everybody forgot to inform me about that. It was a hassle, but I wasn't alarmed. I thought it was probably a technical error. Maybe they hadn't mashed my breast flat enough or they hadn't gotten enough of the surrounding skin squeezed into those mammogram plates. I made an appointment for the following week.
I had the new mammogram done and waited while the radiologist checked the quality of the images. After a few minutes, they led me into another room to have an MRI. The tech sent me back out in the waiting room, but she didn't tell me to get dressed yet. I continued to wait in my little terrycloth robe until everyone who had had their mammograms had gone. Finally, when one of the x-ray technicians told the last woman she could leave, I asked her what exactly what going on.
"We're just waiting for the radiologist to get here," she said. "You can put your clothes back on, though, if you wish."
A tiny shiver of uncertainty ran through me. It couldn't be anything serious, I told myself. There was no need for panic. Yet.
About a half hour later, after I'd been stuck at the Breast Center for about 2.5 hours, they brought me into to see the radiologist. He told me he was sorry for the long wait, but he wanted to be able to talk with me personally. Uh oh.
"Okay," I smiled.
"Come on over here and let me show you," he said. He was sitting behind a massive machine of some kind, so I found my way over there in the dim light.
"Look at this," he said. "I don't know what this is, but it doesn't look right. It's not cancer. This is not cancer, but whatever it is, you should just have them take it out."
I could see the bright spot on the x-ray. I could also see the large black area at the bottom of the MRI image.
"What's that?"
"It doesn't look like cancer. We should just have someone take a look at it and remove it."
That wasn't much of an answer. They told me my next step would be to find a surgeon who could do an actual biopsy. I thanked them for their help, got dressed and went back to work. "At least they don't think it's cancer," I tried to reassure myself. "I'll just get this thing removed and all will be well." It's just going to be a big pain in the ass to find a surgeon, get a referral and ensure that I was meeting all of my health insurance requirements so I could get this paid after I had it done.
I was feeling a little numb. I came back to the office and told a friend, reassuring her that the radiologist said it wasn't cancer. She didn't seem to be terribly impressed with that statement. I could tell she was more worried than I was. That worried me. I went to my office and started the process going, trying to dismiss any concern.
