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mammogram, sonogram, epigram, candygram
Man, they sure do like to show you *every waiting room in the hospital* when you come in for a mammogram.
Most important bit first: the radiologist, who was really, really thorough, says it's "probably nothing," but since this is the first mammogram I've had at this hospital, and they have no baseline to compare it to, and since I noticed this lump as a difference from one month to the next, she wants to be extra-super-duper cautious. So, on Thursday morning, someone is going to put a needle in my boob and withdraw some tissue fibers. I'll have a definitive diagnosis 24 hours later.
First of all, Northwestern Memorial? I'll never understand why a hospital that's not named after a specific person is called a "Memorial" hospital. There must be another meaning of which I am unaware.
Once the paperwork snafu was figured out (about an hour and a little spent in the waiting room til my doctor faxed stuff over), I filled out all the requisite forms, and continued on with my waiting in the waiting room. They have wi-fi, so I chatted a bit with
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madlori, whose ginormous Sherlock AU I'm currently beta-ing. When my name was called, I was led (with a small group of other women) through a door, down a hall, through another door, and into... another waiting room. Where we were told to wait.Okay... don't know why we couldn't wait in the first waiting room, but I'm sure they have a system.
I had just enough time to take my laptop out of my bag, open it up, plug it in, open my browser and chat program, and begin chatting again, when my name was called, and I had to get up and follow another person through more doors and down more halls to... another waiting room.
At least in this third waiting room, there was, indeed, more waiting. So I got to do some chatting and browsing. After about twenty minutes or so, I was led to the changing room, where I put on a hospital gown--fresh from the oven! Not even joking! They have this little hospital-gown oven to keep them warm for people. Adorable. Then I was assigned a locker for my clothes, and advised to keep the key with me.
Folks, you could not lose this locker key. It's attached to a giant, brightly-painted fish made of particle board as wide as my laptop bag. So, I put it in my bag, and was then led to--
wait for it--
A WAITING ROOM. My fourth in two-plus hours!
I think Northwestern Memorial Hospital is constructed of nothing but waiting rooms, like some kind of health-care center from Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
I waited in the waiting room for about fifteen minutes--got back on chat. Just as we were sorting something for the next chapter, I got called in for my mammogram.
Interlude: Body Modesty: I Lack It.
Most medical professionals are extremely conscientious about a patient's body modesty. They are careful to request the absolute minimum body exposure required for any given moment during an exam. I've never had body modesty--not when I was young and slim and fit, not at my heaviest, just... not. I know I'm in the minority, but I've never understood the problem, *especially* in a doctor's office, and *especially especially* in a doctor's office that is devoted solely to The Womanly Bits. I've always been practical about doctors and dentists an the like: do what you have to do, doc--that's why I'm here. Maybe it's that people who spend any amount of time doing live theater lose any and all possible body modesty because, oftentimes, you have forty-three seconds from exit to entrance and you must change into an entirely different costume, which means you cannot get back to the dressing room, so you have to change just offstage, where you try not to elbow the stage manager while attempting to keep your balance in ridiculous period shoes lest you fall into the weighted curtain pulls. You simply cannot give a single fuck about whether your pubes are on display to the stagehands. Or maybe it's just that, since I know the medical professionals stare at breasts all day long, every day, for years, I can't get too worked up about them seeing mine.
Whatever it is, it always surprises doctors and nurses and interns and techs that I'll strip off if I'm having an exam that requires exposing Those Body Parts. My tech today said, "oh, it's okay, you don't have to--" and I said "the gown gets in the way, and doing the whole 'now your right arm out of the sleeve' and 'now your left arm' is fiddly and annoying. Where do you want my boob?"
(Aside: before the mammogram, the tech had me palpate my breast and isolate the lump, and she put a sticker with a tiny metal ball embedded in it over the general area so that she could aim at it.
The sticker was a clown face.
Not even lying.
The hell, mammography department? The hell?
There were other sticker rolls, but I didn't bother to go over to the wall and check them out. Who knows what I would have found.)
So, a mammogram. Gents, substitute "testicles" for "breasts" if you want to understand the joys involved in this exam. The mammography unit is a low-level x-ray machine, but since the x-rays need to see all the details of dense and often fibrous breast tissue, not bones, there are multiple x-rays taken from a variety of angles. This requires a lot of manipulation of the breast (a nice way of saying squashing and mooshing and flattening and molding into all kinds of unnatural shapes, as if your breasts were two lumps of Play-Doh with nerve endings).
The basics of the machine are as follows: a base plate, which supports the breast, where the tech will place and position the breast for each x-ray. This plate is attached to a mechanized, articulated joint that can swivel and tilt depending upon the angle needed. There are multiple top plates, made of clear plastic, which are swapped out depending on what kind of information is required: one plate might have nipple-shaped measurement outlines; another might have a grid with which the tech can isolate a specific area of the breast, etc. There are handles on either side of the machine for the patient to hold onto with one hand at a time, depending upon which breast is being examined, to keep the arm out of the way, and to keep the patient from falling down.
My first x-ray was head-on, breast flat on the base plate which was parallel to the floor, with a square top plate that had measurements on it that I didn't understand.
Here's the fun part. The top plate is lowered onto the top of the breast, and then... keeps going. And going. And going. It's like an Energizer Bunny that was weaned too early and developed a personal vendetta against tits. My breast was flatter than you can *possibly* have imagined a breast could be flattened. I'm a D-cup, and I think that my breast was less than an inch thick when the top plate stopped moving. Seriously--that's just wrong. Then it's "hold still," x-ray taken, and relax.
Next, the bottom plate goes to a 45-degree angle to the floor, and the tech comes over to swap out the top plate and re-position my breast against the bottom plate. Gravity is working against us at this angle, so the tech brought the "top" (now really 45 degrees to the left) plate to bear just to hold my breast up while she moved it around to get it into the right position. Once she got it there, it was Energizer Bunny time again. Instead of flattening top-to-bottom, it flattened my breast into what would look like a conical cross-section, if that makes any visual sense.
It was unpleasant. It's unnatural to begin with, and you have to contort your body in order to give the unit maximum breast access while still keeping it at the right angle and keeping your arm out of the way. It felt as if the machine had grabbed my breast and was pulling it away from my chest with steadily-increasing force as it pressed it flatter and flatter. I wanted to say "look, if you really want my breast this badly, all you have to do is ask."
For the next one, the plates were vertical, and my breast was the cast of Star Wars in the trash compactor. You know how when you see a mammogram, and the breast looks really round and plump and generally has a Platonic Ideal breast shape? Yeah, you're looking at the trash-compactor-scene mammogram, and it looks like that because the breast has been pancaked.
Then the same sequence on my left breast. Yay?
The tech tells me that, since this is my first mammogram with the hospital, the radiologist might want her to bring me back in for a few more pictures, if she sees anything she wants a better look at.
Okay. Back to the Room de la Wait. Open up chat, get a little more beta work done, and then, yup, back for more smooshing. I can't describe these particular angles to you; suffice it to say that I am now a firm believer in M-theory, which posits that we exist in eleven dimensions.
(By the way, if you go to wikipedia's entry for M-theory, there is a graphic that is supposed to represent string theory. It looks like a swirly-colored mammogram. Go figure.)
I got to see some of my mammograms at that point. They were... breasty. I always find this kind of stuff interesting on some level, but I have to tell you, breast tissue cannot measure up to the CT scan I had when I was 25, which I still have in a manila envelope, that shows my brain. I mean -- I CAN SEE MY OWN BRAIN. Come on, what is cooler than that?
Now comes the part where they can take pictures by using sound. Duuuuuuuuuude.
Once again, my fannish chatting was rudely interrupted by yet another medical exam. This time, a sonogram. Nothing much to tell here; if you've ever been present at a sonogram, or seen one on tv--when they put goop on a pregnant woman's belly and then run a price-scanner over it--that's exactly what it was, except the goop went on my breasts. Not sure what they cost, though I'd be willing to haggle if you want to buy them as a set. Since I could lie down, and there was no pain involved, I mostly zoned out. It was kind of soothing, frankly, like a massage. Nothing weird or erotic about it, and the room was nice and quiet, and I was kind of stressed at that point, so it seemed like a good place for a brief brain break.
Once that was over, the tech told me that I could stay lying down and hang out, and when the radiologist got to my mammograms and sonograms, she'd be in to chat with me.
Then she said "Dr. Radiologist is very, very thorough, so she may do the exam again herself."
Right. Laptop time.
A little more chat, and in comes Dr. Radiologist with a young man who is clearly doing the Lady Parts rotation of his hospital internship. Dr. Radiologist begins the body-modesty spiel, now with extra OMG MAN-PRESENCE, and I'm out of the gown again halfway into her first sentence. There was a brief pause, and then she said (I'm quoting here) "Well... excellent!" And, just as I expected, she did the whole sonogram over again. Then she gave the "It's-probably-nothing-but-just-to-be-safe" bit, and I went to schedule my needle biopsy. Joy.
Updates As Warranted. Now, if you'll excuse me, there's an independent bookshop, a glass of riesling, and a grilled cheese sandwich calling me.
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Your description made me giggle helplessly. I've been having mammograms for years (routinely since I turned 40, and I had one to check on a weirdness years before that), but I've never seen the swappable top plates, wow. The first mammo I had up here, the tech slapped my boobs around like pizza dough, but the last few times the tech has been a lovely woman who takes as much care as is feasible.
Enjoy your book, booze, and brunch food!
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Oh, chesticles. Why so hilarious-yet-potentially-deadly.
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{{{you}}}
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SERIOUSLY WHERE IS THE 3D IMAGING? WHERE IS MY JET PACK?
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I appreciate the detailed rundown. Not just because I am interested in and care about what's going on with you, but also as like a practice run for when I eventually gotta get mammogrammified.
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Yeah.
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Thank you for keeping us updated in such an entertaining and informative fashion.
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I kind of want to know what the other stickers were, now.
The mashing beats the alternative, though.
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(luckily I am both too young for regular mammograms, and too Medically Speshul to probably manage one)
My mom doesn't call 'em mammograms any more. She calls them her "annual boob squishing".
(ow)
...otoh, sonogram on breasts sounds infinitely preferable to the abdominal ones I've had (32oz of water an hour before. and then they press down.)
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I CAN SEE MY OWN BRAIN. Come on, what is cooler than that?
Well, I don't know about brain, which is pretty cool, but I have a CD-rom with pictures of my spine from pretty much every angle known to man. And you can see all the damaged bits! The bits that make doctors go, "Ooo," in that tone that you don't want Doctors to say, "Ooo," in.