The Mammogram Appointment that Ended With a Biopsy

I went for a mammogram on a Tuesday.  My appointment was around noon so I figured I could run and go get this taken care of on my lunch break.  The mammogram itself was a little more detailed than normal since this wasn’t my routine, yearly test and they had me wait back out in the waiting room while they had a radiologist look at the results.  I knew something was wrong when they asked me if I could stay for an ultrasound.  So much for getting this done at lunch!  The ultrasound tech had a hard time locating the spot they had apparently found on the mammogram.  I was told I had dense breast tissue which makes locating abnormalities a little more difficult.  Great.  Normally an ultrasound shouldn’t hurt but she was pressing down so hard and going back and forth over the same area again and again and again.  And this was all after my left breast had been flattened and pulled every which way for the mammogram.  Finally she called in the radiologist to come in and do the ultrasound and it seemed like he had better luck.  He was at least able to match up the spot on the ultrasound with the spot on the mammogram.  This “spot” would now become known as an “area of concern” that they wanted to biopsy!  Biopsy?!  This was quickly becoming a nightmare of an afternoon!  (I learned later that at this point the radiologist already knew it wasn’t a cyst because they could see on the ultrasound that the spot wasn’t filled with fluid, that it was a solid mass.)  I didn’t have to move to a different room for the biopsy since it was ultrasound guided and I was already in the ultrasound room.  As I laid there watching the nurse prep the room for the procedure I couldn’t help but notice she brought in 6 very large hollow needles.  I mean, really medieval looking shit.  “Those can’t all be for me”, I thought.  Maybe she’s just stocking up the room.  I was already crying as they explained the procedure to me and to my horror I learned that yes, all of those needles were for me.  All six of them.  Actually 7 needles were involved if you count the one they had to use to give me a local anesthetic injected into my breast to numb it.  Unfortunately I would quickly learn that needles were going to become a constant in my life.  I could tell by the look on the radiologist’s face as he was swapping one needle out for the next that what he was seeing in the way of the tissue samples he was getting wasn’t good.  Of course he told me that he couldn’t tell me anything and that we had to send the samples to the pathology dept. and wait for them to write their report.  This would take several days and if Friday hadn’t been Good Friday I may have gotten the results then, but as it turned out I had to wait until Monday, the day after Easter.