So I found another lump earlier this week while bathing and doing the self test business. Hell fire, I thought, this better not be cancer again. It's just so damned inconvenient. Further proof: the fact that my oncologist is on Ballas where I40 is no go.
My oncologist is shorter than me. She's also a hell of a lot more butch.
I swear she gets her hair hurt every two weeks; it's a perfect precision cut and it's expensive hair. I stare at her hair and her opulent eyeglasses while she studies my file. It's easy to stare at the top of her head since I'm perched on the table wearing a robe made from bleached paper that is silent when I open it. (While waiting for her to come into the micro room, I tossed it in the air like pizza dough and took photos. I get so bored with down time).
Everything about her is crisp. Her pressed button down shirt, the sharp cease in her pants, her hair cut and the brittle way she speaks. Strictly business, I've only seen her smile once when I congratulated her on her marriage (She married in Canada where same sex marriages are legal, imagine that)
Oh yeah, the lump.
I was sent to get an ultra sound today. I 'slipped into' another quiet paper robe and gazed at recessed incandescent light bulbs in the ceiling while tossing on the table. Dr Goodhope (that's her real name!) came in, looked at the screen the tech was working on and announced: Necrosis!
Benign?, I prompted as she watched the screen.
Yes benign, she answered distractedly.
(Thanks for answering I needed to inhale there.)
She excitedly asked the tech to remove my name from the images and make detailed photos so she could show her residents. I gazed at the light bulbs for another five minutes and took the time to tell them about using CFL and how I reduced my power bill from 70.00 monthly to 20.00.
I once explained to a man that breasts were nothing but fatty tissue, milk ducts and lymph nodes.
After a moment of silence he said, Thanks for ruining it for me.
From Google:
Fat necrosis is a benign breast condition whereby a firm lump forms in an area of fatty breast tissue that has been damaged (or, in my case, a tumor was removed along with half of my breast and the resulting surgery produced dead tissue). The nodules and plaques appear in the first several weeks of life. brownish color. This may be due to fat necrosis. The blood supply to fat is always poor and many events around the time of surgery can interfere with this.
