Odds

The coin is in the air. 70% chance of heads; 30% chance of tails. The coin flips as it makes its trip through the air. Time is almost standing still in anticipation. It will land sometime between tomorrow and August 2 and then I will know: heads I'm healthy; tails I have breast cancer. 

May 18 I had a routine mammogram. 

Confession: I should have had this mammogram back in November. But I was busy. And I was stressed to the max under a burden of volunteer work. And the weather was terrible. And the days were short. And while mammograms are hardly invasive, scary, painful, challenging, nerve-wracking, and there is really no excuse, it's not like it's a barrel of laughs getting your girls squeeze and why bother getting it done on the first possible day when I've been poked and prodded through numerous orifices looking for signs of cancer that have never had so much as a hint of finding anything. Why did I make excuses?

A routine mammogram just like every other routine mammogram I have ever had. And there have been numerous. No big deal. A couple of weeks later, I get a phone call telling me I need to come back for more screening. The appointment is set for July 9. The timing works perfectly. The busy softball season wraps July 8. July 9, for our family, summer can officially being. 

I've been recalled after a mammogram before and I'm pretty confident. I have dense breasts and sometimes it's hard to see stuff. So I go back to the clinic and get my girls squeezed a second time. Big deal. 

They took 2 different kinds of images: each girl had its own problems. That should have been my first clue. I completely missed it. When the technician came back, she gave me the good news first: everything on the left was clear. Then came the news I wasn't expecting: the right side needed further investigation. 

The technician was ever so lovely and reassuring. You have microcalcifications. They are common. Normal, even. Especially for women as they get older. Nothing to worry about. Perfectly benign. But. If there was a 98% chance of good news, they'd send me home with an All Clear. But once the numbers dip to 95% chance then they just want to exercise an abundance of caution and do a core biopsy. Totally routine. Pretty much painless. Not invasive. Nothing to worry about. Just to be sure. Please come back August 9. The day before our family heads into the mountains for 3 days of hiking and backcountry camping. Not the best timing, but not the worst either. Not that I told them all that. I just said see you in August. I didn't notice that the technician never said "you". "You" have a 95% chance. Only numbers. Nothing personal. 

I went home feeling pretty confident. I've had a biopsy before. It was easy. It was only good news. It would be a month before the biopsy. Surely if they were worried, they'd want me to get a biopsy done much sooner. Then the phone rang and they moved my appointment to August 3. No big deal. The timing would work well with our family schedule. Probably better than August 9. And then the phone rang again. There has been a cancellation and we'd like you to come in July 20. Three days before my Big Run of Juan de Fuca. Sure. That timing would work. July 20. Exactly 3 days away. I hung up the phone thinking isn't it nice that they put me on a cancellation list so I can go on with summer and trying not to think about why it's me on the cancellation list when there are probably more worrisome cases walking through the clinic door on a daily basis..

I like numbers and so I looked it up. Sure enough, microcalcifations are normal and nothing to worry about. Unless they present in certain patterns. I thought I had only one microcalcifiaction. Maybe I only heard the word "one" when she said the word "some". Or maybe when she was busy downplaying the need for a biopsy, she was busy writing in my chart: "warning, warning, warning".

The biopsy wasn't a big deal and yet it WAS. It was invasive. They put a big grinding needle into the middle of my breast. It wasn't painful until the numbing wore off but none the less, as the needle went in and the machine made all its grinding noises, I felt a wound opening. 

The bruise is a pretty shade of yellow. There will be small scar. Much smaller than the scar I feel in a place far deeper inside myself. The part of me that is trying to reconcile the what-if. The part of me that knows that as much as the technician played down the need for this biopsy, the reality is that 30-40% of women will get bad news.  There is a 60-70% chance that won't happen to me. 

The coin is in the air. It flips end over end. It is going to land soon. I'm strong. I can do this. Can you pass me a tissue? For some reason, my eyes are wet..