The Biopsy Cont...

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Back at the waiting room a little time had passed and some of the people had been called, and there are now some empty seats available. We didn't leave our post. The woman gagging on the barium finishes drinking the stuff and was quiet. The TV droned on…
“Traci,” I heard a voice say.
“Here” I answer. She told me to follow her and I did. Mark was planning to stay in the waiting room, but I ask him to come in to the ultra-sound room with me.
“Am I allowed to come in there?” he asked. I didn’t know, but I was so frightened that I didn't care about the rules.
“Please stay, until they kick you out.” I whispered to him. So we both follow the technician in to the next room.
We entered the ultra-sound room and were greeted by a beautiful young woman. I think that she was somewhere in her early thirties but I am not sure. She has long brown curly hair, twinkling brown eyes and a welcoming smile;
“Hi, I’m Angela…bla bla bla.” Angela started explaining to us what the procedure for a stereotactic biopsy will be. I had a vague idea because I read up on this type of biopsy, but I was glad that she explained the procedure to me again.
The doctor would use a long (very long) needle which he would insert into my right breast. Using the ultra-sound machine Angela would guide the doctor to each tumor where he would take a sample of the tumor for testing. The doctor would use four needles in all, two for each tumor because he liked to take two samples from different parts of each tumor. Then a team of experts would examine the tissue samples. I liked the fact that more than one person would be looking at the tissue samples. I was not real convertible with the idea of one person (who maybe was having an off day) deciding if I had cancer or not.
Angela then told me to take off every bit of clothing from the waist up, and put on a hospital gown with the opening in the front. She left the room. First I changed in to the hospital gown, then I sat on the examination table Mark sat in a chair next to me, Angela did not ask Mark to leave.
A few minutes later Angela came bouncing back into the room, she asked me if I brought back the x-rays (mammogram-rays?) that I had checked out of the hospital? I tell her no. I checked the x-rays out in May and bought them to Dr. Sullivan’s office. I told her that I left them with the doctor at his request because he wanted to study them. He told me that he would return them to the hospital. As we were discussing the x-rays, Dr. Martin, the doctor who was doing the biopsy walked in. When I went to Dr. Sullivan I thought that he would be doing the biopsy, but he told me that he was sending me to a doctor who was an expert in biopsies. If I need surgery after that, then Dr. Sullivan would take over my case.
Like Angela, Dr. Martin looked like he was from central casting. He was tall and handsome, somewhere in his late thirties, and he had a very charming bedside manor. I was starting to feel like I walked into a soap-opera hospital scene, in more ways than one.
The doctor introduced himself to Mark and I then turned to talk to Angela. The smile was no longer on her face. I felt an immediate chill between the two of them. The tension in the room grew so thick that the sharpest scalpel in Memorial Hospital would have been useless. Mark and I look at each other our eyes are saying ‘Are these the people who will determine my future?’ Angela tells him that the x-rays are missing, he tells her to check again, because if they were not found that I will have to have x-rays taken again, and that would throw off their schedule. She leaves the room.
Once Angela was gone Dr. Martin turned on the charm, he explained the whole procedure (again). He would use a local anesthetic on my chest, so I would be awake for the procedure. Then he left the room.
“Can I stay, or should I wait outside?” My husband whispered to me.
"You're not going anywhere." I tell him. "These people are scary." He stays, and we wait. It felt like as a patient I spent most of my time just waiting around.
Soon Angela came bouncing back in to the room, all smiles holding the x-rays. Mark and I speculated that someone from the hospital placed a call to Dr. Sullivan’s office and had the x-rays sent over. All I cared about was not having to have a new mammogram done. Moments later Dr. Martin came in, and the frosty atmosphere returned to the room.
I lied down on the table face up, my hospital gown off. They cover my body with what seemed to be some kind of cloth, only a small part of my right breast exposed. That was nice because I didn't feel embarrassed. Dr. Martin gave me a local anesthetic. My torso went numb, but I was alert. The doctor walked to the counter and took a needle out of its packaging. It looked like a foot long stick with tweezers on the end.
The needle looked scary,
“Don’t be frighten by the length." The doctor said. "It’s designed for many different kinds of biopsies.” The doctor tested the needle by opening and closing the tweezers part. He rejected any needle that did not meet his standard. He then made a small incision in my breast and slowly pushed the needle in. Angela worked the ultra-sound guiding Dr. Martin. Mark and I found ourselves becoming fascinated by the process, watching the needle move through my body on the screen. I have to say the doctor and technician became all business. They worked well as a team. Barley a word was spoken, yet, they were able to anticipate each other’s moves. But I still felt coldness between them.
After a while my mind started wandering and I found myself making up scenarios about Dr. Martin and Angela. When Mark and I started dating we both only had part-time jobs so there wasn't much money. One of the cheep ways we found to entertain ourselves involved watching a TV show that was not in English. We would watch the action and make up our own story lines and dialog. We thought that this was very funny.
As the biopsy continued my mental stories about the doctor and the technician became stranger and stranger. They were twins separated at birth, one was raised rich, the other poor. That’s why they hate each other… No, lets see. Angela always wanted to be a doctor, and resented all doctors…No, that’s not right either.
On, and on, my imagination goes, until I decided that this was a love story gone bad. Very, very, bad. This game kept my mind occupied while the biopsy continued. Dr. Martin would open a new package test the new needle, finds one that he likes, and started the process all over again. The biopsy seemed to take forever and for some reason that I don’t understand I started to feel sleepy. I found myself drifting in and out of consciousness. Mark watched the procedure spell bound by the technology.
Dr. Martin tells me that I have very dense breast tissue which made the process more complicated. Trust me, it is very strange to be lying on an examination table, looking up at a man that I had never seen before, pushing a needle into my breast. Not only that, he was using his hip to help push the needle farther in to my body. I watched sweat beading up on his forehead, weird. Dr. Martin gave a running commentary of each aspect of the biopsy. He warned me right before he took a tissue sample. The mechanisms made a clamping sound and I felt a jolt in my body, I don’t know how to describe it, but it was strange.
I was starting to think that the biopsy was never going to end when Dr. Martin told me that he was done. Then he leaves. Angela stayed for a few minutes cheerfully chatting as she told me not to call the hospital for the results, but that someone from Dr. Sullivan's office will call me in a few days, then she leaves. I got dressed and we were about to leave the room when Dr. Martin stopped by again and wished me luck.
It was so strange, whenever one of them was in the room, that person was charming and cheerful. But, when both of them were in the room, neither of them smiled, and all the chit-chat stopped. It's funny, when you think about it. Mark and I had stood outside the waiting room so we would not be subjected to the Soap Opera blaring in the TV only to become part of a real life hospital drama that was every bit as bazaar.
Mark and I left the room and headed out to the parking lot, I was feeling physically sore and mentally drained. I started thinking that maybe my perception of Angela and Dr. Martin is just my imagination gone wild when Mark said to me.
“What was their problem? I looked at him surprised.
“You noticed it too?” I asked. “I thought it was my imagination.”
“ There was something going on between those two, during the whole procedure she kept looking at him and he would never make eye contacted with her.” Well, I know my husband is more observant than most men, but if he noticed also, then there was some bad history between the doctor and the technician. Like I said, the whole event was so strange that between their good looks and their behavior I felt like I was in a soap-opera.