ted
ted sent some sweet words last week:
I heard from your woman about the surgery. I know two (2) women down here who have had similar procedures with very little fuss or muss, so I hope you are not troubling your pretty little head about it too much. Magnificent breasts such as yours require periodic maintenance, like a powerful yet temperamental Jaguar coupe, it is all to be expected.
is there any doubt his book will be a great success?
to babble or not to babble
rudy says he thinks a breast scar would look sexy!
i’ve been thinking a lot about leanne’s comments. for the record, i don’t think this is *not* a big deal. but it doesn’t seem as much in my character to worry about the things that *are* happening. seems i’m much more comfortable dwelling upon all those things that aren’t happening but that might happen given any set of bizarre, tragic, and/or esoteric circumstances. just visit me before i fly to know this. or ask my mom and dad about my sheer terror over the toaster those nights in sacramento. just like ruth reichl, which i might say with just a hint of pride, i sometimes panic before the bay bridge and need to visualize atlas holding it up just to cross it. but when it all comes down to it and i finally get on that bloody plane, i tend to be quite calm (ok… so there’s valium to blame too).
so i’m not as anxious as i was – in particular – in the long days after i got that first letter last july. the letter was so naggingly vague, and made clear that i could do absolutely nothing until i scored the next appointment for a mammogram. i had no idea what they noticed going on in my breasts, hanging like two dark and mysterious orbs. i feared it was something really bad.
but now, it’s like light shining into my left breast. i feel an idea of what might be going on inside, and have an appointment to find out for certain. and i am promised a brand not unlike valium for a ‘monitored’ anesthesia. i have met the surgeon and she has looked directly in my eyes. i feel like she’s seen every kind of thing moving into this gigantic and growing circle, this non-exclusive club of people to whom calcifications and biopsy have happened. the more i talk about it, the more women say “me too” or “my friend so-and-so” — nobody DOESN’T seem to know someone with this. i’m not alone. and there’s eve, who’s water glass i must have drunk out of. and there’s leanne, taking notes on the whole thing. so there’s company.
also, and this might sound strange, but i like the attention. a biopsy – as validation (?!). and i feel taken care of.
or at least terribly common.
so i realize these might be illusions just the same, but they’re a better reality than i could otherwise dream up.
now that i’ve made the flight analogy, i’ve been lost combing through my old posts and my babbling capacity for psychofear, but again, about those things that aren’t happening (yet). and yet, yet i do distinctly remember walking up a hill in sf in june or in august 2001, looking at the skyline, and being terrorized by the hallucination of a plane crashing into it.
and what am i doing up so early on a Sunday!
thoughts from leanne
a few thoughts from leanne who loves moya and her breasts but not just for her breasts :)
i get anxious and sad and nervous and fearful about *s-u-r-g-e-r-y* (such an ominous word though it seems like it’ll be such a minor event) for biopsy and anxious about the results and glad that there’s something being done to better define the calcifications. isn’t it ironic that they’re called “calcifications” and the thing my bones lack are enough calcium and here moya has extra calcifications. okay so calcium for bones isn’t the same as calcifications.
i hear from and talk with all these people who think it’s not that big of a deal to have your breast sliced into in two places and it’s oh-so-common and happens all the time and you go back to work the next day and … well … never happened to me before so it feels oh-so-uncommon to me and i think it’s a big deal. i feel like i’m having some overly dramatic emotional reaction. i’m struck by something to do with loss. perhaps the loss of a few grams of body tissue? or the loss of certainty of health (not that certainty really exists)? that we’re healthy until proven otherwise.
i’m also grossed out by the description in dr susan love’s breast book of making an incision and digging through tissue to get the calcifications out and all those stitches (and, oy, the picture of pulling tissue out makes me nauseous — and i don’t need any more nausea these days).
i know the anxiety is not at all rational and logical and doesn’t take into account the facts and information about the probable results of the biopsy — that dr grissom is extremely talented and experienced; and that it’s fabulous these are found early and can be removed instead of waiting for lumps and bumps; and it happens to 20% of gals; and “they” (the experts) know a lot about what to do even with uncertainty about what to do; and, being a stats geek, i know that 90% benign is really superduper high odds, and, anyways, i get weepy over the thought of a surgeon slicing pieces out of moya.
Moya Watson 