Biopsy Is Reality

My sister, Elizabeth, has changed her plane ticket to open ended return. She is here to take me to appointments. 

I really enjoy picking her up at my late brother, Steve’s house, where his widow, Ingrid and my nieces live. I am happy because she is here for ME.

We drive to the biopsy. She wants to park the car a few blocks away where the parking is free, so we stop at the Breast building and let me out. 

“Hurry back, okay?” I close the door and head up the elevator.

I am led to the same room where I had the ultrasound and aspiration. I am comforted by the familiarity of the room. I know how to open the blind from lying on the table so I can distract myself from the procedure by envisioning pretty decor inside the mock Tudor houses across the street.

I am fighting with the new tech. How did this happen? What happened to Marijana, the smooth Yugoslavian tech?  This tech is rolling her eyes at me, upset. 

“You were instructed to wear a bra,” she says.

“I don’t have one,” I lie. The truth is that I have one. My friend, Kate, gave me hers in January when I visited her for about five days at her loft. It is too uncomfy to wear though.

Like the tech, Kate was puzzled why I didn’t own a bra. I told her that in the previous year I found bras too uncomfortable; too small, too big, too uncomfortable. I had tried to buy myself a bra that fit, back in the fall or so. None of them fit right. Time to go on a diet, right? If one cannot even find a bra to fit?

The new tech is upset at me. 

“How are you going to keep your breast secure when you leave here? There is a lot of blood. The breast has to be kept strapped into something.”

“How about a tensor bandage?” I suggest brightly. 

She ignores me and goes on and on about what I was told to do, how I was to have brought a bra. How these suggestions are put in place for solid reasons, and how I should not just ignore their advice.

“Can you please just lose the attitude?” I venture. “I mean I am sorry about the bra, but you don’t have to roll your eyes at me, right? I mean look what I am going through.”

To my shock, the new tech flies to the door, saying “you obviously don’t want me here so fine, I will get you another tech.” She slams out.

I am stunned. I lie back on the table wanting to cry.

The door is opened, ages later, by another beautiful radiologist. She is a fellow in radiology. Is that a senior resident in radiology? Not sure. I instantly love her. She has a Middle Eastern accent I cannot pin down. Not Persian, I figure. She hits the consonants too hard for that. 

I tell her my side of the confrontation and she apologizes for the tech and says they are all so booked, would it be alright if Sylvie returns. I am okay if she is, I say. I have this beautiful, soft-spoken Indian/Persian/Morroccan goddess in charge, so I’m safe.

Over the next two hours fourteen pieces of meat are tweezed from inside my right breast and lymph nodes. I can communicate with this radiologist, whom I have by now learned is Egyptian. She is bright, sweet, and in control. I would do anything she asked.

I fix my right hand at my eyebrow the whole time. I answer her questions with a voice round and bright. She asks if my hand will be comfortable there for two hours. 

“Oh yes,” I reply. The real reason my right hand is so comfortable there is that I am shielding them from seeing my eyes in case I cry. I am so glad they have asked me to keep my right arm up the whole time. There is something either too intimate or perhaps too "Jeffrey Dahmer" about two people removing pieces of meat from your breast while you cry. I am protecting them from my feelings, as they have a job to do.

I glance, once, at my breast. It is bathed in blood. There is blood on the women’s transparent plastic gloves. I am amazed that it doesn’t hurt. It is uncomfortable: the pressure, the leaning in on the breast, but no sharp pain.

To help them out, I launch a merry monologue. I tell them how I read in Michael J. Fox’s autobiography, that Woody Allen was asked by the actors in one film what age he would have liked to have been born in. Woody listened to all their responses and then said, “I would never have liked to have been born before the invention of antibiotics.” I say I would personally change that to the invention of anaesthesia.

The radiologist is so sweet. Her voice is low and soft; her hair is long and loose in natural ringlets. She talks with enthusiasm and pride of the revolution in January. 

She warns me before she hits the “stapler” as I call it, which chomps down on a bit of meat in my breast. Her voice rises loud and sharp: “ONE TWO THREE” before the “stapler” crunches. I giggle inside. She sounds hilarious shouting like this. Still, it proves she is willing to sound silly to do the right thing by the patient. Someone in med school must have told her to raise her voice to warn the patient; that her voice was too soft.

After two hours and fourteen bites of meat from all three tumours, we use hi-ho, happy, cheery voices to end this intimate experience.

I stride out to the waiting area where my sister, Elizabeth awaits me. She has already popped her head in earlier and told me she was there, which I completely appreciate.

I motion to her to follow me quickly. Her footfalls match mine. I appreciate that she is rushing. 

I push open the door to a small bathroom I used earlier and pull her inside. I throw my arms around her and sob loudly into her tiny shoulder. She breaks down and does the same. We are hugging and sobbing. I finally feel safe enough to tell the truth.

“I am sooooo scaaaaared! I am so scared.” We rock and weep together.

My big sister, Sasa, Liza, Liz, is here. I am alright. And I don’t have to be positive.