The mammography office was half empty. The bored looking receptionist continued writing something while I leaned over the counter.
" 'Scuse me. I have an appointment?"
"Name?" She asked, without looking up.
I gave her my name.
"Have a seat and fill this out." She handed me a clipboard, then went back to her task.
I sat in one of the empty seats and scanned the form. It was the same one I had completed every year, for the past ten years. The prerequisite questions were there: name, address, history of cancer, in my life as well as that of my family, blah ... blah ... blah. A routine visit with one exception: three days before I had found a lump in my right breast.
During 2003 and 2004 I spent my time shuttling between doctors, labs and hospitals due to some really annoying uterine fibroids. A Myomectomy was performed to correct the problem. “One in a million,” my gynecologist muttered when she gave me the results of the biopsy. She shook her head in amazement or disgust – I couldn’t tell which. “They are almost always benign.” I felt so special.
The usually benign fibroids were pre-cancerous. A Hysterectomy followed, leaving my ovaries intact for future estrogen production.
In the pre and post surgical flurry of that discovery, I had forgotten to schedule my yearly mammogram.
Now, as my heart flipped-flopped at that single oversight, I heard a very proper British voice say in my head, ‘Rotten luck.’ No. I’m not British, but I tend to think in movie images. This voice seemed to belong to Wilfrid Hyde-White - Colonel Pickering from My Fair Lady.
To be continued...
©2006 Annelise Pichardo
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