There I was; lying topless in a cotton gown that opened in the front, staring up at the off white ceiling, wondering how, at 41, I was in such a predicament. After all, I work out, eat fairly well, take care of myself.
The doctor came in, along with the ultrasound tech, and one female chaperone. (Though I always think its kind of funny when the female chaperone is nineteen, maybe twenty.) Along with all the medical equipment humming in the background, and the rolling bed, the small room seemed more like a sardine can and less like a clinical setting with four of us stuffed inside.
The doctor dimmed the lights, wow-chikka-wow-wow, he was nice, pleasant. We chatted and I thought, “hmm, maybe this won’t be so bad.”
The tech found “the spot” with the ultrasound machine in my right breast. It took him maybe two seconds to find it. The doctor took the ultrasound wand from the tech and lost the spot immediately. I chalked the difference up to the fact that the tech did this every day. It took the Dr several minutes to find it again. Over the next ten minutes he found and alternately lost “the spot,” shooting a needle into the soft tissue of my breast, numbing it.
When the Dr took up the scalpel I asked him if this was his first time doing a core biopsy. He thought about it and told me it wasn’t. The fact he had to think about it concerned me. Also the fact he hesitated before every action, almost like he was reading the procedure out of a book in his head, then following it with action.
Over the next two hours, my confidence dropped as the Dr found and lost the spot, had the tech put on sterile gloves and find it three more times, only to lose it as soon as he took the wand. With scalpel in one hand, and ultrasound wand in the other, he cut into my flesh as warm blood pooled in a puddle beneath me.
Then he inserted the needle. It is actually two needles, one inside of the other. It’s job is to collect tissue, not fluid, so it is larger than a normal needle. And when engaged, sounds a lot like a pneumatic drill.
Using the wand in one hand, the needle in another, he attempted to locate the spot and biopsy it. Six times he engaged the needle, cutting flesh from the inside of my breast, pulling it out. And six times the female tech leaned over my head, picked out the flesh from the needle with tweezers, lifted it in front of my face, and walked across the room to place it in the specimen dish. (Why the specimen vile wasn’t next to me instead of across the room I don’t know.)
Once six samples were collected, the Dr inserted a titanium marker in my breast. This shows future mammogram readers there was a biopsy performed there.
The female tech applied pressure to the wound for fifteen minutes, and the male tech applied tape. To my breast. While lying down.
I watched an interview once with a plastic surgeon. His specialty? Breast implants. One of the best breast augmentation specialists in the country, the interviewer asked him what distinguished his breast work from others. He laughed and said it was simple really. Once the augmentation was inserted, he had the woman lifted to a sitting position in the operating room to ensure that when the breasts “fell” they were perfectly sized and even. Obviously this is not common practice in plastic surgery or other medical procedures because this one step made his work superior to that of his peers. In short, he understood that boobs move, and where they are when lying down is not where they are when sitting and standing up.
That lack of common sense in medical training, translated to tape gaping and being essentially useless in keeping the wound closed.
I left and was told to come back next week for the results.
Next week I came back.
The surgeon told me the biopsy Dr missed the lump. MISSED IT! He put the titanium marker in the wrong place. And, in two months when I am healed, they want me to do it all over again.
Cancer may be the vehicle but time, incompetence, and sheer bad luck will be what ultimately decides my fate.