Chapter 2 SIX MONTHS LATER…

FEBRUARY 2001
I love February because it has my daughter Ronni’s birthday, my niece’s birthday, my birthday and Valentine’s Day. I hate February because it hasRonni’s birthday, my niece’s birthday, my birthday, and Valentine’s Day. February is the shortest month of the year, yet next to December it is my busiest month.
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"TRACI!" My husband Mark shouted as he walked down the stairs.
"KITCHEN." I replayed.
"What are you doing?"
"Frosting cup cakes."
"I can see that's what you are doing, my question is why? Didn't you make cup
cakes last night?"
"Those were for Ronni's class in honor of her birthday, these are for Lea's
class Valentine's party.
"Gotch ya"
"Why were you looking for me?"
"It's February."
"So!"
"Aren’t you supposed to back to the hospital some time this month?"
"Yea"
"Have you made an appointment?"
"No"
"Why Not!"
"Too Busy." Mark gave me that look of his that said 'liar'.
"I'm scared." I said with tears welling up in my eyes. Mark walked over
to me and hugged me.
"You have to go." He whispered.
"I know." I whispered back

WHAT, ME GET A MAMMOGRAM? cont...

As I was being led to the changing area next to the monogram room, the technician turned to me and said: “Hi, I’m Sandy, and I will be taking care of you today.” This caught me off guard and I had to stifle a laugh because it sounded so much like what you hear in restaurants. “Hi, my name is Sandy, and I will be your server today. “ At first I thought that having the nurse/technician introducing themselves was stupid, later I found that I like the idea of knowing the name of person who is about to do some horrible medical procedure to me. It made the procedures seem…less intimidating.
I was warned over the phone a few days earlier not to wear power or deodorant before the test. I asked why. They said there might be metallic in those products that could be picked up on the test and give a false positive. Sandy showed me to the changing room. I took off my shirt and bra and put on a hospital gown. Sandy brought me to the mammogram machine and squished my breast into a very uncomfortable position.
If you have never had a monogram (shame on you) it works something like this: You stand up against a weird looking machine, the technician, usually a female, tells you to take off the gown to expose one breast. Then she then places that breast between two glass plates and the machine squeezes it as flat as possible. This is very uncomfortable.
Then the technician takes an x-ray picture. She does this with each breast getting two or three different angles. Then you wait while a doctor looks at the X-rays and tells you the results. I had come to the conclusion that the monogram machine was designed by a man who hates women.
Actually I was curious; I wanted to know who came up with the idea that to get a decent image of a woman's breast you have to squish it. So being an assistant librarian I did some research. According to www.gemedicalsystems.com and www.members.ozmail.com. Doctors had been using standard chest X-rays to check women for breast cancer since the 1920's. Around 1966/7 a new machine was in development: a machine that could focus on breast tissue. This machine consisted of a tube and a lens on a three-legged stand that produced images of better quality than the standard x-ray.
Major studies were done in 1963-1967 using 60,000 women. Then in 1973 270,000 women were studied to see if annual screening would make a difference in reducing the mortality rate of women over 50. It did. It was after these two studies that interest in mammography grew.
The new machine was in limited commercial use in 1967, and it was called the "Senographe," which is French for "picture of the breast" (just why the French have a word for picture of the breast is another question). Anyway, the machine was changing and improving through out the late sixties and the seventies, at about the same time that more women were entering the medical field. Coincidence? I think not!
By the 1980's, the second generation of mammogram: (by this time it was being called a mammogram) was being used. This machine looked a lot like machines do today (scary), the new machine reduced the exposure time a lot, it also had increased the accuracy, and better film was available. It was around this time that the first motorized compression device was invented (that is what they call the glass plates that squishe your breast), it reduced the tissue thickness so the doctors could read the x-ray better (so they say). I say the compression device is used to torture women, but that is just my opinion.
Anyway it was with this second-generation machine that doctors were able to start mass screening, so that more than just rich women and those with really good health insurance could get accesses to mammograms and the benefits of early detection.
In the 1990's more changes and improvements happened to the machine. They became more 'user friendly' for the technicians (what every that means), which made the exams faster and produced fewer false readings.
In 1999 the Mammogram Standard Quality Act (MQSA) was passed, which required that all mammography equipment must pass the MQSA test in order to legally operate in the United States (nice to know).
I didn't know any of this when I was sitting in the mammogram room waiting for my results, all I knew was that I had better things to do than sit around and wait.
After a while Sandy came back, she explained that there was "something" on my right breast and they were not sure just what it was. I shouldn't worry, it was probably nothing, but they wanted me to return in six months and have another mammogram.
"Great" I thought, "all I wanted was to do was have my prescription renewed so I gave up half a day, and now they want me to do this all over again in six months." I wasn't scared, I was angry.

WHAT!!! ME GET A MAMMOGRAM?

Chapter 1, pages5-7

Yea, I showed her all right, truth be told, it was easier to get the stupid mammogram than to find a new gynecologist. I wanted someone I trusted to give me a recommendation. This was not the kind of doctor you pick out of a phone book. Even though I have lived in this town for over two years I still didn't have a close
enough friendship with any woman in order to ask her if she could recommend a gynecologist. So, that is why on a hot summer afternoon that I found myself driving
on 287 north toward Memorial Hospital angry that I had to give up an afternoon that could have been spent at the community pool with my kids.
This was my third monogram, and my second one at Memorial. I chose the hospital instead of a clinic for the test simply because I knew were the hospital was.
I have no sense of direction and get lost easily, hospitals are easy to find because they are big and they have those blue hospital signs that show the way. What I
didn’t count on was getting lost once I got inside of the building.
Memorial Hospital is built in a hill, so the main entrance seems to be on the ground level and the Radiation department four levels underground. Yet, if you go to
a different entrance, you have to go up a few flights to get to the main lobby. Too confusing for me, so I make it a point to park in the same area and use the same
entrance each visit.
Once I found the right floor, I wandered around the halls for fifteen minutes before I found the radiation department. This department was large. People go there
for all kinds of X-rays and many different types of scanning tests. There was a main waiting room where you check-in and wait to be called. This waiting room was
big and can accommodate somewhere around thirty people. The room was a nice green color (+) the walls were lined with comfortable chairs (+) that were too close together (-). There were two receptionists who knew what they were doing (+) and there were nice pictures on the wall (+). There were also two couches in the center
of the room facing a TV (---). I hate TV's in waiting rooms they make it hard to for me to concentrate on my book. As TV's go this one isn't very loud, but I still
found it annoying. I give the room a C+ (it would have been a B+ but it loses a whole grade point for having a TV).
I proceed to the reception desk to check in. I was told that I had to go to the out-patient department FIRST to check-in, then come back to the reception desk. Luckily the out-patient department was on the same floor as the radiation department was so my chances of finding it quickly were good.
Let me stop for a moment to tell you about the out-patient check-in procedure, and the people who work there. This department is the place where every, I Mean every patient who is having any kind-of same-day procedure (excluding surgery) must check-in. It is always busy. You stand in line until one of the clerks yells 'NEXT',
then you go to a window where you present a valid ID card, a prescription for what is being done and your insurance card. The clerk working at the window puts all
the information into the hospital's computer so you can be billed, then they give you a paper and send you on your way. The clerks have a very repetitive job that
could become boring fast, and the people doing this job could become bored and surly. But they are not. In the next year I will spend a lot of time there and I never
once encountered an unpleasant person.
The check-in clerks are a cohesive group of people with their own brand of humor. There is frequently some kind of in-side joke going on, and if they liked you, they will let you in on it. These wonderful people consistently put me in a good mood for the start of whatever torture my doctors planned for me that day.
Back to my mammogram; I did all the out-patient paper work then went back to the radiation waiting room. I tried to read my book, but found it hard to concentrate because of the TV. Luckily I was called quickly.

Breast Cancer, My Story

I started this blog earlier this year as a class assignment, an assignment that I didn’t want to do. Unlike those people on reality shows who will do anything for their 15 minutes of fame, I am a very shy and private person. But to pass the class I had to write this blog. Well, it turned out that graduated school was not for me, so I quit both the class and the blog and haven’t thought about either for some time. But now it is October and everywhere you look someone is doing a story about breast cancer, a disease that I am very familiar with.
While I was in treatment some of my friends told me that because I have such an odd way of looking at things, I should write a book about my cancer experience, so I did. Then I read up on how to get a book published. It was more work trying to find an agent and/or a publisher than to write the book. I was too shy to send out my manuscript to strangers. What if they hated it—or worst, what if they liked it-then what would I do? So, the manuscript sat in a drawer.
But with all the press and pink everywhere, I keep thinking about my story and that I really want to tell it. My blog seemed like the perfect way to tell my story. My working title is Jersey Girl-without her tomatoes. So here it goes-----chapter one-page one.


CHAPTER 1: ME GET A MAMMOGRAM?

AUGUST 2000
I pulled the car screeching in to the parking lot, late again. I started to think that maybe when I moved two years ago I should have changed to a new
Gynecologist, because this hour long drive every six months was getting tired. I found a parking spot and ran into the building then up a flight of stairs.
Half out of breath, I entered the office and approach the receptionist,
"Hi, I'm Traci and I have a 1:00 o'clock appointment with Dr. Munn." The receptionist glanced over her shoulder to the wall clock, which read 1:10
Then she looked back at me and said:
"Have a seat." I had just sat down when a nurse called me into an exam room. The nurse took the standard test: weight, blood, blood pressure etc…
"Hmmm, you're blood pressure is high, which is very unusual for you, have you participated in any strenuous activity recently?"
"You mean besides the-I'm late run through the parking lot/up the stair sprint?"
"Great." She said laughing "I want you to sit in the waiting room and calm down for ten minutes, so I can get an actuate read."
"Won't I mess up the doctor’s schedule?"
"Not really, she is running behind." I went back to the waiting room. The room was small for a two-doctor office. The furniture was standard, and the
walls were white and there were a few out dated magazines lying on a table. I have never liked this waiting room, the doors seemed to be in the wrong place
which made the room disorienting. Decorator I am not, my own house is decorated in early second hand, but I am sensitive to the feel a room projects and
I have made a game out of grading business offices and doctor's waiting rooms.
This one was small (-) the door placement is wrong (-) and the walls were white (--) but the furniture is nice (+) and practicable (+) and I liked the pictures
on the wall (+) so I gave it a C-.
There were two very pregnant women in the room chatting and laughing. They smiled at me when I entered the room and invited me to join them. I declined
And sat and as far away from them as I could, I opened my book and started to read. Within a few seconds I was transported to the 1950's Irish countryside
of a Mave Binchy novel. I could smell the open fields and hear the giggles of teenage girls running home from school not knowing that some of their innocence
was about to be shattered. The nurse opened the door and called the name of one of the women. She exited the room. I continued to read ignoring the remaining
woman. A few minutes later I got called.
I was at the doctors to have my bi-annual pelvic exam and pap smear. When the exam was done Dr. Munn told me get dressed and meet her in her office.
When I got there she was looking through my chart.
"I don't see a mammogram this year, when did you get it done?"
"Welllll, I didn't."
"Why not?" She asked.
"Because I've been busy." I answered, curtly. I hate mammograms, the thought of the whole process gave me the creeps.
"It is important that you get one, and soon." She said.
"Yea, yea, I'll get one…soon." She changed the subject and we talked about other health related issues.
"That's it, I'll see you in six months." She said, getting up from behind her desk.
"You haven't given me my prescription for my birth control pills yet." I reminded her.
"And I am not going to, either." She stated.
"WHAT!!! Why not?"
"You didn't get the mammogram that I asked you to get, that's why!" She explained that if I wanted to be her patient and I wanted birth control pills then I had
to have a exam twice a year and a mammogram once a year…no monogram-no birth control pills-no exceptions.
I really needed a new prescription (did I mention that I'm a procrastinator?). I told her that I had less than a week's worth of pills left. The funny thing was,
she thought that I wanted the pills to regulate my periods while in the pre-menopausal stage. I told her that I took the pill so I would not get pregnant. She started laughing, I mean really, really laughing. When she gained control of herself she said that she was sorry for laughing at me, but she found it funny that as a forty-four year old, I was worried about getting pregnant. She was treating women ten years younger than me for infertility. I reminded her that I had a six-year-old and it took me less than two months of trying to get pregnant.
We struck a deal, she gave me a month's supply of pills (they always have some demos lying around). If I have the mammogram in the next 30 days she will call a prescription to my pharmacy, if I don't, I am out of luck. I took the pills and stormed out of her office. I though to myself, how dare she be so mean to me. After all, I just drove over an hour to get here. I'm not going to get my breast squished. I'll just find a new gynecologist, I'll show her.
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