Friday, October 10
Harrold, our GPS Viking Queen, obviously confused by all the recent re-maneuvering of Boston roadways and infrastructure by the way she keeps blasting out directions in Norwegian, sends me spinning my tires in search of Mass General, and in particular, the parking garage for the Wang Building. She tells me to Sink Peter, whoever Peter is, then Sink Venstre. But there is no turn where there should be one, and Harrold thinks I’ve totally botched it, and yells something that sounds like Decompleded, and then, her voice turning to a low growl, Talk to me Peter…
I do wish someone somewhere would invent a GPS system that could be programmed with all your favorite celebrity voices. I’d follow George Clooney just about anywhere.
But for now, I’m stuck with Harrold, and she’s better than nothing. Eventually, we figure it out, language barrier and all.
I have left ample time, for the usual traffic that makes a bottleneck of things at journey’s end, and I am glad not to be rushing. But as I wheel into the parking garage, my bladder begins to screech, all that green tea suddenly threatening flash flood, and I rush for the bathroom as soon as I’ve landed in the Breast Center on the second floor, a place positively buzzing with women waiting for mammograms and appointments with the breast docs who make this center their professional home.
After filling out several pages of medical history (you’d think that after filling these things out over and over again this year I’d have figured out by now what to write under “have you ever smoked?”—like “smoked what?”), I change into the gown and wait. I am led into a mammography room, stark and bare save for the familiar robo-like clampdown machine, its white, metallic, movable, crushing arms menacing me from above as I take a seat and wait my instructions. We have a bit of history, the clampdown and me.
The technician asks me for my “story,” and I give it to her in a nutshell: had breast cancer this past year, mastectomy left side in March, new girl installed this past June, nipple arrives in four days. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting this. But she is gracious, explaining that she has an order to do both sides, which she obviously can’t do (implants just don’t photograph well) so excuses herself for a few minutes to get the order changed. Another technician comes in and asks me to wait in the hallway for a few minutes so she can use the equipment in the room. As she takes her place behind the glass, she is joined by two other technicians, who begin to fumble with the equipment in a way that makes me glad to be leaving. It feels strange to be unseated, but I am glad it is me, and not one of the older women I’ve seen in the waiting room, some in wheelchairs, some in wigs, most in various stages of discomfort and frailty, who must wait in the hall. This I can do, and it doesn’t bother me—but for someone else, it might feel as if they’ve been stripped of their Johnny gown and left to wait their turn in some crowded, public place.
My technician returns, the trio of trespassers leaves, and I am able to greet the mammo-machine, up close and personal. She takes three films in about 15 minutes, repositioning my right breast in the clampdown each time. She is gentle, deliberate, wastes no discomfort. My right girl is infinitely cooperative; she is an old pro at being manhandled, pulled, squashed. It’s my ribs I’m worried about. Crunch, crack. They’re just simply in the way.
I am glad that my left girl does not have to be further undignified by this procedure; surely, she would not hold up under the pressure, and given that she is due to be put under knife and needle again soon, it’s important that she’s left to look her best. But as the technician prepares my right girl for the final film, with a clampdown pinch that has reduced her to a pulp, I am sad that she must remain under such strict scrutiny for all time. There is a certain savagery about mammography—the painful squeezing of your breast into a flat, unrecognizable pancake, the uncomfortable, unnatural positioning, the bared vulnerability of the whole thing—that I simply don’t like, and yet, quite possibly, it was mammography that saved my life. The fact that it could save my life again sometime in the future is not lost on me.
I just don’t want them to find anything. I just want to be in the clear. I just want to go home. But all morning, all week, I have felt the fear mount a campaign of unyielding pressure to worry, fret, wring hands, and imagine the worst.
She asks me to have a seat in the waiting room until the radiologist has read the films, to stay in my gown in case she needs to take a few more shots. I walk slowly down the hallway. There are paisley dew drops scattered about my long Johnny gown; the strap houses a line of them, and as I rewrap myself in the comfort of the gown, I find myself taking the strap in my hand and starting to make my way down the line, dew drop to dew drop, fingers stopping at each one, impromptu prayer beads, to speak to myself, and find reassurance in the hushed echoes of repose. There will be no need for retakes. They got good images. Everything looks sparkling, healthy, clear. No cancer. No cancer!
More waiting. A woman is wheeled out in tears. I try to smile at her, send her some stranger comfort through the fear that has settled in the waiting room like a thick morning fog, but she bends her head down to dry her eyes, is pushed through the door out of sight, and the opportunity has gone. Another woman arrives to take the seat next to me. She is out of breath, wrapped in a blanket, and clearly rattled. An older woman in a black beehive wig waits with her companion for news that all is clear, that she can go. They whisper between them, the hush of forced quiet adding to the weight of the fog that has remained. The space feels dispirited, its occupants imprisoned in some kind of strange pergatory.
I, too, sit and await my fate. I try to focus on the vase of lovely yellow flowers, on the pile of magazines strewn on the table, but all I can feel is the sore pinch in my throat, the bubbling rush of nervous energy pushing from inside my chest, the dread and doubt clenching my gut, the chill of the fear that hangs around me in thick layers.
It’s been at least twenty minutes now. Has the radiologist found something suspicious on my film, has he, or she, summoned other radiologists to look, share an opinion, consider my options? Are they deliberating whether to take more films, or to send me over for a breast MRI? Or is something showing up so loud and clear that they’ve decided to go straight to Dr. Specht with another recommendation, a biopsy as soon as possible, perhaps, or a mastectomy on the right side? Damn, should have done both.
I realize that my thoughts have taken me to places I decided long ago I didn’t want to revisit. The self-doubts, the second-guessing, the destructive patterns of what ifs and should haves. Shaddup already, I tell myself. I'm going to be just fine. Will I go through this every six months? Or is it just this terrifying this first time, this first mammogram and cancer screening since the diagnosis, when the horrors of my last mammogram experience set off the ensuing trickle of dominos—the ball-dropping phone call, the retakes and magnifications just before biopsy and diagnosis—that still hasn’t quite played itself out?
The room has cleared out. Gone is the woman with her tears spilling down her cheeks. Gone is the woman with the beehive. Gone is her companion. Gone is the woman coughing and out of breath. One by one they’ve been summoned and released.
Where is my technician? No doubt her last words to me—“Don’t worry; I won’t forget about you”—were some sort of warning that this may take a while.
Another woman arrives, sinks into the plush loveseat, and settles into her thoughts. I can feel my breath skimming the surface of my lungs, my belly tight, lips dry.
And suddenly, I hear “Elizabeth?” and I see that my technician has appeared from around the corner. “Come with me,” she says, and I try to breathe as I grab my bags, my notebook, my jacket and follow her through the fog into a dark room lit only with the promise of good news, and it is not until she says “Everything looks fine” that I am able to exhale and feel the thump and drive of blood and breath through veins and lungs again. I feel my belly begin to soften, the release of fear and anticipation flowing through my fingers as I hastily sign the mammogram report and tell her “Thank you.”
It’s not until I’ve grabbed my clothes out of the locker and sat back down in my seat that I actually read the form and see that the first line has been checked: “No abnormalities—we recommend that you return for screening…as recommended by your doctor.” There are at least twenty options that could have been. And the first line? That’s reserved for the best news. I swallow this, taking my seat to wait for Dr. Specht, and feel the deep relief start to trickle through my system. The warmth has suddenly returned to the room.
A minute later, a nurse I recognize from Dr. Specht’s office fetches me and takes me down a labyrinth of hallways to an exam room that I instantly recognize as the site of my first meeting with Dr. Specht last February, when I sat numb and resolute, my head clouded in fear, trying to make sense of a life suddenly suspended by a sudden dizzying array of unexpected detours that hid menacingly in the road ahead. The phantoms briefly encircle me, but they are but ghosts, and as the release completes its full exhale, they vanish into the walls of the room, fold themselves back into my flesh, and try to hold on with each passing breath.
Dr. Specht arrives with her usual smile and good cheer, and friendlier apparitions, of reassurance, and the warmth and generosity of the good care I’ve received in this space, flush out any remaining anxiety. She tells me that the first screening is always the worst, and promises that it’ll “get easier.” We talk about the wild ride of Tamoxifen, and she encourages me to continue to eat well and exercise every day to help control the symptoms, and suggests experimenting with taking the Tamoxifen at various times of the day to see if it helps lessen my sleep disturbances and hot flashes at night. She completes a breast exam, on both sides, and confirms what the mammogram has already told us: that everything looks good, that there is no cancer. No cancer.
I take stock: since that first visit, the dark rush of fear and confusion has returned every so often, but something washes it away, stronger currents of change and determination, to live without letting the shroud of fear block the light, and to reach and strive for something better, follow the seasonal patterns of change and rebirth, seek the sun, bathe in the moon, and swim with the river.
There will always be the occasional fog that rises up from the river to obscure the light, the warmth, the way back to center. The fog, the dark, the forays into fear and beyond, all seem necessary to the journey. For without them, there would be less appreciation of the sunnier, lighter moments, and the resulting clarity would not seem so visceral and elegant if not contrasted by passage through the deep, shadowy rifts and chasms between pain and understanding.
Harrold and I take to the road and head for the hills. We are grateful for the unchanging systems of roads and navigable routes that lead us to our final destination, the ease of traffic, the opening of space and sky, and the unblinking slip of time that carries us back to our little harbor, safe port for my soul refugee. I sink into the deep, still waters, and for now, I am calm, as the phantoms flee the rising waters that refill my wells with light and love. For now, anyway, the fog has lifted.
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