MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN 40-60ish

I'm baaack.  I was right on the money with it taking three hours, but I had to spend the last hour kicking some Cheetos-stealing cat butt and then finishing off what was left in the bag myself. (Gack!  Hey cat, I found your missing hairball.)

Well...

Short Story:  I'm good.  My right treatment breast is fine and both breasts remain as densly inscrutable as ever. 

Long Story:  (Go get a snack, I'll wait)  Check in, same ol' same ol', let's fill out three forms to update the files.  One form was asking a about previous Dx & surgeries, dates, outcome.  Duh!  I just wrote "see your own files for this" on it.   I got a tech I never had, so figured I would cut right to the chase.  I told her, "Look, last time I had to get 'extra views' because I had a fold or wrinkle on a a couple, and all I know is all that squishing left me with capillary damage (petechia,) so whatever you do, pose me so I don't have any wrinkles.  I don't want any re-dos this time."  We got all the way to the second one before she said, "Oh I have to re-do that 'cause I missed some tissue [near armpit.]  Grrr.  She said she would come back to that one.  I actually said, "With so many flabby women to image, how often do you end up having to re-do some views?"  "Oh, it happens quite often."  (I kept my cool, but I my brain lava was bubbling dangerously close to the surface.  I was thinking, Does anyone else have a problem with getting the bonus rads when they have to re-do an image; not to mention pass the cost along to your ins.? Way to keep the cost down.  Not!)  Then, still on my treatment side, she said , "Uh-oh, there was a wrinkle in there."  I lost it.  I said, "You aren't going to get your gold star from me today."  Isn't that lame?  I could feel the lameness even as it left my mouth.  But then, I added some drama.  I started backing toward the door (the universal sign for 'patient getting ready to bolt') and told her, "I don't feel like getting any extra views.  I don't want that radiation, and I don't want any more permanent bruise spots.  I said that when I came in.  Now, you have two re-dos?  I don't want them.  I'm serious."  She said she would give what she had to the radiologist and see IF the radiologist needed better views.  I took the guesswork out of the equation right there, "It's not about what she wants.  If I say that's enough, then I'm done."  I didn't say, Deal with it.  I only thought that.  Next, I got some ultrasound on lefty, that was monitoring a tiny, supposed fibroadenama.  It has remained tiny for two years now.  I'm off the hook with that one, they are bored with it and it won't get any more future scrutiny.  It stopped concerning me last year.  The wait to see the radiologist was not too long.  "The time has come," the radiologist said, "to talk of many things; of shoes and ships and sealing-wax and..."  Sorry, I was pretending my radiologist and I were "The Walrus and The Carpenter" (Lewis Carroll.)  What she really said was, nothing worrisome seen in me, "See ya' in a year."

Ridiculous Side Story:  So yesterday, I was at the accupuncturist and he was doing some kind of freaky TCM diagnostic on me, or the Qi (chi) of my spleen or something about my neck, I forget,  and he used the "Chinese Cups" technique.  Five heated glass cups went on my upper back and created a vaccuum, to see what got pulled up to the surface skin.  Nothing too unusual.  However, after I came home, the five pinkish red spots continued to darken and bruise up.  Think hematomas.  Like jelly jar hickeys on my upper back.  (OMG!  When I was 16, why didn't I tell my mom that mark on my neck was where an alternative doc had checked my Qi?  I'm sure the grounding for going alternative would have been shorter than the grounding for coming home late with a hickey!)  Sorry to digress.  Anyway, I am just asking you all to appreciate the sass a person with five bruise-y marks like that on her back has to have to stand there and tell a mammo tech she is worried about a little boob bruising. I'm sure she told the story at lunch break about the moron she had this morning.  However, as dumb as those marks look, they are not a rads damaged breast and they will resolve on their own, no matter how crazy I appeared.  This part of the story really cracks me up still, but maybe you had to be there, or maybe you had to be me.  Ahahahahahahahahaha!

I'm already over it.  I don't have to go there for another year.  Ya ya ya, and a hoo hoo hoo!

Happy Dance!!!