Denial Ain’t Working No More
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
here’s been something that has been going on with me medically for a couple of months now. I haven’t blogged about it or mentioned it before because I was employing my usual method of dealing with issues I don’t feel like addressing: denial. Until today it’s been working.
It started with my mammogram back in early May. I hadn’t had one since 2006 (or was it 2005?) so I was overdue. The tech told me as she got me ready that they had switched to digital mammography in the intervening years. Since digital was so much clearer, she told me not to be surprised if I received a call to come back for some follow-up images. It seems to happen pretty often, she advised.
So I wasn’t too surprised when a week later I received a letter telling me to come in for a follow-up mammogram and possibly an ultrasound. I was most miffed about making the trek to radiology again for more breast squishing.
But like a good patient I have the follow-up images. I’m waiting in the waiting room when the tech tells me that he (the radiologist) sees something really small along the chest wall behind my right breast. He thinks I should go ahead and have the ultrasound. Fine, I roll my eyes, just feeling that we are just delaying the inevitable result that this is nothing. I have the ultrasound. The tech tells me that there is a tiny little thing that looks like a lymph node that really don’t seem very worrisome. She goes out to talk to the radiologist. I’m waiting for the, “OK, it’s nothing, you can go home” words. She returns and instead says, “Well, in light of your family history (my sister had breast cancer), he wants you to have a breast MRI.”
At that point, I’m just through. This is ridiculous. I have nothing truly indicative of breast cancer. No real lesions, no calcifications, just a tiny area that they wouldn’t even give a second thought about if not for my sister’s history. (And FWIW’s, she is my half-sister. Her father is my stepfather. We have no history of breast cancer in any other member of my family including my father’s side of the family.) I decide that I’m not doing anything else without talking to Sam, my favorite doc in the whole world.
Sam, herself a breast cancer survivor, listens to me go on about this foolishness, and decides to send me to Dr. Dahlia, the breast surgeon who thinks like an internist. She trusts her. OK, fine. I’ll see what she says.
I go to see Dr. Dahlia who is not overly concerned about this area seen on the mammogram. It is not palpable. She thinks that it probably is a lymph node, especially since I was nursing (they grow with nursing). But she wants me to get the breast MRI. Sigh. When is someone going to tell me that this is just over? Yeah, so they’re all being careful and shit, but come on! When is it going to stop? Are they going to decide to just take my breast off because they’re not sure what it is and they want to be careful? But Dr. Dahlia thinks that the breast MRI should be the definitive test.
I get stuck in a metal tube for 40 minutes. As a present, they give me a DVD of my breast MRI. I wait a week for results. I hear nothing. The next week Dr. Dahlia calls. The MRI was read as negative. Great, so all this can come to an end, I think. But they didn’t read it with together with the mammogram. And she wants the guy who read the mammogram to read the MRI. He’s on vacation until next week. Shit! This just will not end!!! She’ll call me back with the final reading.
I waited another week…then another. Nothing. Interestingly last weekend I receive a mailing with both mammograms and my breast ultrasound films. No note. No explanation as to why these were sent to me. Just the films. I put them aside. My denial was still working.
Today Dr. Dahlia called me. Again I waited for the “all clear” words. Again they didn’t come.
“Well, he (the radiologist) is not sure and thinks we should do a core needle biopsy.”
“Oh come on!” I exclaimed. “This is just too much. This is nothing. Do you really think that we should do all this?”
“I think it would give us an answer,” she replied.
“Fine,” I said, seething.
And then I hung up the phone and decided that I had had enough. This is ridiculous. This is all CYA medicine. I’m getting off this rollercoaster. I’ll call her back and tell her that I’ll just have a follow up mammogram or MRI in 6 months. Whatever this is will either have progressed or stayed exactly the same. There is no reason to keep going with this drama.
I called AdoringHusband first. And in true caretaker fashion, he agreed with me, and said that we should call Sam and have her speak to the radiologist before we go anything further. And then I did something sensible. I called my aunt (who is also a gynecologist).
When I told her that I had decided to forgo the biopsy, the first words out of her mouth were, “OK, you’ve gone and lost your natural mind.”
I tried to explain to her why my plan seemed reasonable and how they were making a big deal about nothing, and Auntie M cut me off and began to tell me about myself in a way that would have done my mother proud.
“If it was just you and the cats, you could take your time and be crazy like that, but you’ve got Z and there is no time for crazy-acting. You need to know what’s going on. If it IS something, you’ve got to deal with it NOW, not 6 months from now. You’ve got to do whatever it takes to be in the best health you can FOR HER.
You can be scared. You can be anxious. You can be anything you want. But you better have that damn biopsy!”
I sheepishly called Dr. Dahlia’s office and told her to go ahead with scheduling the biopsy. But today, my friends, my denial just ain’t working no more. And I can’t stop crying.
I know that it should be OK. But what if I’m wrong?