Thursday, March 30, 2006

Psyche!

Remember back in (God, I can't believe I'm dating myself like this) high school - call it the eighties. You'd tell someone something unbelievable, the say, "psyche!". As in "Just joshin' ya", "I'm totally messing with you", "Silly you for believing me."

Well, I got a bit "Psyche!" from my doctor.

Flashback to previous post about follow-up mammogram. The previous ending was "and she left the hospital, to live happily ever after." Well my doctor called me up the following week and basically did a "psyche!" on me.

She said, "well you left before the doctor could talk to you further." Hmmm... the sonogram gal said something like, "you are free to go." Guess I misinterpreted that somehow.

Then she follows it up with, "there's some calcification that's just asymetric and we want to do a biopsy."

What I heard was "blah, blah, blah, BIOPSY". As in "cut" as in "remove stuff" as in "get me on the next bus outta town RIGHT NOW".

She must have smelled the fear (horses and doctors, I suppose), and she quickly said, "a NEEDLE biopsy. A small needle, like a sewing needle. We just need a small sample of tissue to analyze."

I'm still not feeling the love. Now I hear, "blah, blah, blah, NEEDLE IN YOUR BREAST." Can it get any better?

So I agree to call a surgeon. As luck (?) would have it, my husband had his appendix burst several years ago and we happen to know a good surgeon. This was one of the surgeons that my doctor mentioned as a referral. Ah! A small bit of coincidental good luck. I'll take it!

I saw the surgeon yesterday for a consult. I didn't hear anything new. I heard "BIOPSY" and "NEEDLE" and "TISSUE" all together and scary-like.

I wasn't really sure what questions to ask. Anestetic? Yep. Recovery time? Short. Pain? Minor. Scarring? 1/4" scar, nothing big.

Then he gave me a card with a website link with more information. As a good patient would do, I followed the link to the site and looked up details on the procedure.

And I tripped across this lovely illustration of what they are going to do:


Does this look suspiciously like a DRILL to anyone but me?!

Okay, so let's summarize. BIOPSY. CUT. TISSUE. BREAST. DRILL!!!!

(faint)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

GG -
My sister had this done recently. The medical professionals always downplay the discomfort (See? That's the kind of word they would use instead of pain). You will be sore and you will want to clear your calendar that day and pamper yourself with some good drugs, a DVD, magazines, whatever. Let your family know that you heard from people on the net who know first-hand and you are to be taken care of that day.

Peace. We hold you in healing light (because it would just be weird to say we hold your breast).
Rachel