Getting a late morning call to come back in to the radiology department after I had just been there for a routine mammogram was very unsettling. It took until the next day to get some answers from my doctor’s office.
My doctor’s nurse called the next day, and I missed the call. I had taken my kids to the library and the park. Life goes on, right? I did feel less inclined to run around through the maze of the playground and more inclined to sit in the sun and read a book. Inevitably, though, there are one or two “Mom, look at me” and “Can you help me do a trick?” requests that pull you back into the moment.
The nurse and I played phone tag for the afternoon when we finally spoke. She dug out the report and read it to me. Had I not called, they probably wouldn’t have looked at it at all. There was a report of at least one suspicious area on the breast, an extra thickening that shouldn’t be there and that was not present the year before. The radiologist was asking for a more intense mammogram on that left breast, and maybe an ultrasound depending on what the new mammogram revealed. Depending on those findings, a biopsy might be performed.
The next day, early in the morning, I got up, blew kisses to my still sleeping family and headed out 45 minutes to the radiology department for my tests. I arrived early and looked for a distraction, kicking myself for forgetting my cell phone, still plugged in to the charger at home.
When it was my turn, I changed, locked up my things in a locker and took the key. I was called in for the first of the tests which included about six different views and were much more painful than the regular screening exam. This was a diagnostic exam, and it required multiple contortions of the breast that made me feel as though my breast would burst.
“Just do what you have to do,” I told the technician, who no doubt felt badly about hurting me.
She led me back to the inner waiting room and told me to stay in the gown. Someone would let me know the results and whether or not an ultrasound would be needed.
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