Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Pressed And Pleated

From Trousering Your Weasel.

So they called me after my last mammogram to tell me they weren't happy with one of the pictures, and would I come in to get the right side done again? And allow time for an ultrasound. Okay. I never did take a good picture.

I've done this before. The last time I was in a panic, and when I was told the appointment was a week out, I asked them to call me if there was a cancellation so I could get in earlier. They did call and I shot out for Kaiser like I'd been spring-loaded. We did the mammograms over again, several times, using concentrated little plates to zero in on a particular few inches of my personal geography, and then they shook their heads sadly and led me to ultrasound, and finally they asked me to go in to the doctor's office for a consultation, and he said everything was fine. Whatever worrisome thing that had been on the film was no longer on the film.

"Where'd it go?" I asked, regretting once again I had not brought extra underpants.

Well, he explained, it probably wasn't there in the first place. It was just a little mammogram technician joke, something to break up the tedium. In all likelihood she had accidentally gotten a little pleat in there. I can see how it could happen. It's like when you're sewing a quilt and there are lots of layers of fabric and batting and thicknesses and everything looks all smooth on top but when you flip it over you discover you've stitched wrinkles into the thing.

Anyway I'm not worried about this. It's probably nothing. And even if it isn't nothing, time has done a number on my ability to work up a good panic. If they've got to get in there and drill or take the whole thing off, so be it. Lop the other one off while you're at it. I wouldn't want to end up always walking in circles.

But it's probably nothing. There's so much opportunity on a woman like me to stitch in an inadvertent pleat. They don't take merely the breast, after all. They gather up any flesh in the vicinity and heave that in there, too. After a certain age there's no real telling what's breast tissue and what isn't. Things are sprawling toward the sides and into the back-fat folds and just to be on the safe side they like to haul all of it around and jam it in the vise. For a few seconds, from the rear, I look like a thirteen-year-old. Then they release the plates and everything rolls back and wobbles for a bit before settling down, comfy and loose as the cat's pajamas.

It was always hard for me to imagine how they were able to do a mammogram on a man. Not the kind of man who has boobs, but ones like Dave. He has everything he's supposed to, but nothing extra. I worry sometimes that without natural fat gussets, he might rip his skin open while sneezing. And yet, a few years ago, he actually did go in for a mammogram. I have no idea what I was doing that was so danged important that I missed the opportunity to observe that. It is nearly beyond my ability to imagine.

But I have a feeling that if someone were to come in the room while he was undergoing his mammogram, they might have concluded that the plates were locked up, and the technician was sliding him in there like a credit card, trying to pop them open again.

Update: It was nothing. Just another mammogram technician joke. Ha ha ha, mammogram technician! You are a stitch! They were looking for something "below the breast, on the chest wall." I told you. If I had a tumor under my shoulder-blade, they could find it in a mammogram.

40 comments:

  1. Well, not to be a soggy blanket, but my cancer didn't show up on mammogram nor ultrasound, and the duct-o-gram (or whatever the heck they called it) was a failure, as they couldn't get those - ouch! - pins into my ducts. Who knew? But the biopsy showed them the cancer I knew was there, and having my boobs removed was one of my best things! Love having a smooth chest, but it would look quite different on you. My boobs were very dense, and yours are nice and squooshy, so things would show up. Not to worry!

    Also loved the t-shirt you made for me "I just lost 10 lbs. Ask me how!" (Even though it was probably only 1 ½ lbs). A bonus is that I can off load my platelets at Red Cross once again! I was sure I would be on the no-call list, but it turns out that once treatment is over for at least 12 months, one is again eligible to donate.

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    1. Squooshy, heck. There's nothing left in them at all. I could just roll them out on the plate and they wouldn't even need the top part. You're my hero.

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  2. I have avoided this test for some time and finally got the courage to do it again recently. I have so little they can smash that it end up being very painful as I lean in on my tippy toes. Well, you can worry or you can just keep an eye on things! I am sure it was nothing, maybe a reversed skin tag?

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    1. Here's a little tip (har) for you. Quit drinking coffee for a few days before your mam.

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    2. And take a couple aspirins about two hours before you go in. Prevents lingering soreness.

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  3. Whew, glad for your false alarm. I have dense tissue or calcifications or whatever the heck and live in a revolving door of call backs, compressions and ultrasounds. I go to my happy place (ie denial land) while I wait and hope for luck. So far so good. It's a crummy annual event, though, my Christmas/Birthday present to myself, a royal boob smashing. Hooray for all of us for going for our annual screenings.
    Thanks for making me laugh at the picture, poor Pootie!

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    1. Why don't you move that up a month next time? A nice February event. It's just the thing.

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  4. Underwent my own version of this a bit further south last year. Oh, the panic I felt...

    The abnormal cells? Where did they go? *doctors shrug shoulders* No problem. What woman doesn't enjoy quarterly Paps?!

    Glad you're okay. :-)

    Pearl

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    1. Quarterly??? Crap. Hey, those are even more fun when you run out of personal juice. Just letting you know.

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  5. Glad to know that, even you went through an ordeal, that you are cancer-free. But is the weasel cancer-free? And would you try to trowser it if it were?

    blessings and Bear hugs!

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    1. I never trouser weasels. Guys do that. I don't think they've yet found a woman at the airport with a menagerie in her pants.

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  6. Glad to hear you got the all-clear.

    And a good reminder to schedule one for meself.

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    1. This one was two months late. I don't really mind mammograms, but there's always something shiny to investigate when you're on the way to the phone to schedule.

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  7. I just got the call yesterday. More tests.
    Shop around, though, as some mammography places are way better than others.

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    1. Really? My choices are Kaiser first door to the left and Kaiser second door to the left. Unlike in previous years, they've gone digital. They no longer haul film around. But the computer was down temporarily and they couldn't zing my result to the radiologist for fifteen minutes. It's always something.

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  8. How timely! I have my own personal smashing scheduled for next week. Thanks for putting a hilarious spin on the event. Maybe I'll print this as a gift for the technician!

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    1. Yes, they're notoriously humorous. When they go to their dark little mammogram technician bars after work.

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  9. The faulty design resulting in the constant breakdown of women's anatomical parts is a powerful reason to question the infallibility of a god.
    the Ol'Buzzard

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    1. "Constant breakdown?" What's that you say, sir? How many times do YOU get up in the middle of the night? :)

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  10. Had to giggle at the look on the technicians face, LOL. The same thing happened to me. They called me back in because they thought they had a pinch in the picture. Your appointment sounds exactly like mine, except for the Dr actually came in after the ultrasound and did another ultrasound to confirm. She said "I see nothing to be concerned about yet." Um. YET? Not very reassuring. But like you, they can lop it all off if they want. These things are useless!

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    1. Reminds me of a friend who had a mastectomy in her thirties. A few years later, the doctor was frowning at another mammogram result and said "we'd like to keep an eye on that." She said, "well, sir, you can take the whole thing off and put it in a jar on your desk and keep an eye on it all you want."

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  11. Jeez, sounds like my experiences. I've learned that when they say "OK, go get dressed now" I say "no, that's OK, you go check that plate and let me know if we need to do this again BEFORE I get redressed." Usually they come back and say "we need to take another film of . . . ". Apparently my breasts are "dense" whatever that means. One time a nurse called me about a film and said "you must have breasts like Dolly Parton" whatever that was supposed to mean. She obviously has never seen me. If my breasts look like Dolly's then she wears WAY MORE bra filler than any of us can imagine. (My breasts might look like Dolly's looked a week after she was born though!)
    PS - seriously glad it was just a "joke"

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    1. Mine used to be dense. Now you could read the paper through them.

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  12. Have you ever seen one of those Japanese egg cubers? You put a peeled hardboiled egg in and compress it into a cube - sounds a lot like a mammogram.

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    1. No, but I have seen those Bonsai kitties in a jar. I would really like cubed hardboiled eggs, though. I really would.

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    2. Make cubed hard boiled eggs by squashing the peeled still warm eggs into ice cube trays and refrigerate until set.

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    3. Now, to look up the recipe for hardboiled eggs. It's right next to the recipe for ice.

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  13. Yep, I went that route, too: mamm, ultra, biop, and finally (apparently to their surprise) the okay. The best thing about it was the poem that came out of it, which the Annals of Internal Med. took--all about waiting for a diagnosis, which I thought the medicos needed to experience, if only virtually. It seems like a long wait, even if they're going from step to step as fast as they can.

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    1. I still haven't had a biopsy. Maybe I've been shortchanged.

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  14. Here in Aus. they ask you to hold off getting dressed while they review the images in case they need to take another shot. I've been having mammograms for twenty years and they've never found anything troublesome. They're so uncomfortable I wouldn't mind skipping an occasional one.

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    1. Seriously. Try going without coffee for a few days beforehand.

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    2. For me, the thought of going without coffee for a few days is as bad as the thought of being squashed!

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    3. Yeah. Well I had my first mammogram at age 35 when I had major soreness all the time--hold onto my boobs going down the stairs soreness--and the technician told me to try going without coffee. So I tried that in advance, had two days of headaches, and then all my breast soreness went away completely. I thought: hm. If coffee can do that, maybe I shouldn't be having it. So I quit for over a year. Then Starbucks came to town and my friend bought me one one morning. I was so freakin' funny that morning that my coworkers bought me one every day after that until I got used to it again and wasn't funny anymore. I never did drink quite as much coffee as before and never had much problems with soreness again.

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    4. Your soreness quotient was leagues above most, I'd say. Ow, ow, ow.

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  15. Well I am VERY happy to hear it really was nothing, again.

    Phew!

    And of course, now I am totally curious how they perform mammograms on men!

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    1. Same way, but it's got to look pretty pitiful. They do the best they can do with what they've got to work with.

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  16. Hooray for the eventual good news! Something on the chest wall UNDER the boob? Lordy, next thing you know, they'll be checking out your naval on your mammograms. How thorough can they get? "We'll just hitch up a bit more tissue here . . . you may experience a little discomfort when we put the plate down . . . "

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    1. I go for mammograms to check for cervical cancer. They are VERY thorough.

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  17. Friend of mine tried martial arts. He hurt his knee. Went to have it looked at, and while he was there asked in passing for an opinion on something else that was odd... which turned out to be testicular cancer, for which he embarked on surgery and treatment, successfully.
    So he can honestly say... aikido saved his life.

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    1. I do predict that there will never be anything like a mammogram to detect testicular cancer.

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