Mammogram 2019

Every other Spring Break I make the drive. I didn’t go last year, so it was on for this year.

I arrived 15 minutes before my appointment, as proscribed, checked in and took my seat in the waiting room.

I’d brought my book – the new graphic novel version of The Giver. It allowed me to read, but also pay attention. For the first few minutes, no one else was called .here weren’t many people in the waiting area. It was mostly women, but there was one very large man with a very tiny woman, who I took to be his mother. As I read Jonas’ story, one woman was called in and five came out.

Finally, it was my turn.

“We’ll take a right, then a left,” the nurse told me, smiling. Everyone in mammography is cheery.

She pulled the curtain on a cubicle and handed me a gown.

“Oh, it’s warm,” I commented as I took it from her hands. She laughed and pointed to the warming cupboard where they were stored.

I smiled, entered the cubicle and put on the gown. Once changed, I sat on the bench in my cubicle. Curtain open or closed? I wondered. Closed felt weird so I opened it and waited. The door across from me opened and a blond woman, similar to me in age, height and weight stepped out with a smile on her face and called my name. I followed her in for Mammogram 2019.

Biennially or Bust!

Has it really  been two years already? I asked myself after receiving a follow-up letter to the previous week’s phone message.

I checked my health records and, indeed, my last mammogram was March 5, 2015. As much as I didn’t want to, I made my appointment.

When I checked in at the clinic, a laminated pink card was attached to my HMO card and I was sent back to the x-ray/mammography area. After handing in my card, I took a seat, and pulled out the book I’d brought to pass the time. The clinic was rather empty this Tuesday morning and I didn’t have to wait long before being called back.

I was shown to the change are and handed a gown that I was reminded to tie in the front. “Just open the curtain when you’re ready,” the pleasant mammographer told me. I assumed I’d be out in an instant, but I had trouble with the ties. I could see here the top tied, but not the waist. Weird. I looked in the mirror and couldn’t see another tie. Maybe I am only supposed to tie the top, I thought.

Just then the mammographer asked if I was ready. I pulled aside the curtain and said I;d had a little trouble with the ties. She laughed and said that happened a lot. Once we were in the room, she Untied the gown, showing me that I’d tied the top left to the bottom right. The top right tie had been way up by my neck.

And then the fun began.

I pretended it wasn’t happening. She kept up a stream of conversation. And, voilà, it was over.

As I tied the gown the right way, she told me I’d hear from the doctor within two days of the results.

As I checked out of x-ray, they offered me a reminder sticker for the back of my insurance card. Although I was hoping to put it all out of my mind, I said yes. The two years will pass before I know it.

Mammogram Day #SOL15

If it weren’t so serious, it would be ridiculous. Me, semi-topless and a complete stranger manhandling certain private parts of my upper body onto the mammogram machine. And all the while, you and the mammography technician are chatting away as though you are in a cafe on a sunny day.

As it turns out, my technician and I share a birthday! What a coincidence, as she wrangles the right side.

She has children who look as unlike as my twin sister and I do, as she adjusts the left side.

One of her daughters had ADHD, as she rejiggers my position on the right.

She is from short German peasant stock, as she fashions my glamor pose on the left.

And then it is over.

Until next time.