The Breast “Care” Center Missed the Hazelnut!

The Breast “Care” Center has been spiffed up since the year before. Nice wood, glass doors, new upholstery on the chairs. The machinery is the same though, cold and hard and a bit hurtful. After my 3 PM mammogram, I wait while they check my films. I nervously play with my blackberry, too restless to read.

The marble hard lump is on my mind to the point where I am amazed when a woman opens the door, sticks out  her head, and calls my name: “Mrs. V.  Everything is Ok. You can go now.”

“Are you sure? What about my lump?” I almost blurt out.  But then I was told not to mention it because once I have a lump the staff should not have done a screening mammogram, my doctor should have ordered a diagnostic mammogram. Except, I am between doctors. What a mess.  I hurry to my locker, get rid of the insane asylum gown, and leave.

Screening mammograms discover only 20% of breast-cancer cases.

A few years earlier, after a routine mammogram, they also called my name, but instead of saying “You can leave now, everything is ok”, a no-nonsense lady hauled me to a dark room in the back. A radiologist showed me some nebulous white lines on a grainy x-ray, and explained that those  milky streaks needed a biopsy. I can no longer remember what year or which breast. It turned out to be nothing.

This time though I fully expect to be hauled back to face my back-lit films and be told by a serious white coat that the hazel nut in my right breast is “an area of concern.” Yet, it does not happen. I am waved away.

“I must discuss this with my new gynecologist when I see him,” I think. Instinctively I know something isn’t quite right.