Biopsy and MRI -- A Two-fer Terrific Morning!

My biopsy and MRI at the Air Force Academy clinic were on a Thursday morning. I had spent the week leading pre-school games at our church's VBS, which is a great place to be when the phrase "you have cancer" is first swirling around in your head. "Great" because I was surrounded with a bunch of friends, with worship music that made me smile, with a way to spend a whole morning doing something life-giving instead of being alone with the kids life-wondering.

But Thursday morning, Bryan and I were at the AFA.

The biopsy was first. At 8:00 AM. We got there at 7:45. They didn't take me in until 8:30. This bothered me. I mean, an appointment is an appointment. Mine was the first in the day. What are you doing for half an hour? And then I thought, "Your entire year is going to be full of appointments. How many are going to start on time? Exactly. So just let it go now."

Eventually, I was lying on the table and the doctor was about to poke me with a lydocaine needle before doing the needle biopsy. Just before the insertion he said, "I don't think you do, but I am required to ask: Do you have implants?"

What do you mean you don't think I do? What, exactly, gave me away, Doc?

"Because sometimes we have to poke right through the implant," he continued, "And that gets them mad."

Soon after, I did the MRI right down the hall. Every MRI I've seen in the movies shows a person lying on her back, rolling back into the big tube thing. This is because they've never shown a breast MRI in the movies. For this particular image, the patient lies on her front, with her torso raised up on a plastic ramp. The ramp has a big opening through which her appendages free-fall. And her face rests in a massage-table-like face pillow. And her arms lie outstretched above her head.

And then they roll her back into the tube thing.

Overall, I'm glad the technicians for this were women. They put ear phones on me so I could hear country music--that's what was playing, The Country--during the scan. But the music did not block out the sound of the camera. The machine gun stutter rotating around and around and around. Just breath normally. Just keep breathing. Don't move. Don't move. Don't move. Then it all stopped and they rolled me out a little. Then they injected a contrast into the IV they'd put in before it started. And then I rolled back in and did it all over again.

Never mind the wierdness of the experience. And the emotional discomfort of it. Is this pretty amazing technology or what?

Mayfield arranged for me and Bryan to see the scan. It's a series of over a thousand "photos" linked together so that the radiologist can "play" them to get a full picture. And what we saw was a big, white, irregularly shaped mass on one side with long, tentacally spindles stretching out and sweeping around. Just like a monster. And they showed us the muscle that was glowing with contrast, too, which is why they predicted the cancer was eating into my pectoralis.

There was the "enemy," as Mayfield called it.

I was pretty much thinking, "No, that's not the enemy. That's my body. Why in the world did it decide to mutate? Stupid breast. Stupid, silly, dumb, bad-team-player breast. Now I have to go all Rahm Emmanuel on you and cut you off because you've failed to stay in line."