Think Pink ...

Think Pink ... I don't even like pink, and now I don't like it more :(

My "additional views" mammography this past Wednesday was everything I feared my first mammography would be and more. Excruciatingly painful (and yes, I did tell the technician, but that was not any help) and I cried for a full 10-minutes afterward while I sat and awaited the radiologist to read the films. The pain did subside, so did the sobs, and then I met with the radiologist and heard that yes the unusual white spot needed to be removed. Still only a one in three chance it would be cancerous, but no reason to wait and fret he said. We'll take it out now and test it so you'll know. It was really special having Julie be there with me.

My "stereotactic excisional biopsy" is scheduled for this coming Tuesday afternoon. Not as in music, but stereo as in computer guided surgery. The pamphlet says you lie on a table with your breast through a hole, there's a squeezing process like a mammography, and a computer guided instrument will use the data from the previous mammographies to cut the numbed skin and actually remove the area where the white spot is. I am curiously unconcerned about any risk of cancer (as I trust that we all are on our journeys WITH and TO God, here and forever more) but I am quite dreading how awful the procedure itself will be.

Doctor PCP has prescribed a more powerful sedative than the Valium that I had the two previous times (2 doses of ativan / lorazepam 1mg) and I have another message to her requesting a pain medicine, too. Dave's chauffeuring me downtown to the outpatient clinic.

"Squeeze" ... really, it should just be a four letter word. Drats!