Run Forrest Run

Did you know they give you boxers to wear with your open back hospital gown? I sat in the Day Surgery waiting room for only 15 or 20 minutes before they called me to go to the mammography room. This is a good thing because I don't think I could have listened to Spongebob blasting on the waiting room tv for one more annoying minute.

"I thought I was getting some freezing before coming here," I said to the nurse as she was leading me to mammography. The thought of a 10 inch wire being poked into my breast au naturale was not all that appealing to me.

"They do that in the room," she responded.

As we entered the room, otherwise known as a walk-in freezer, I realized my whole body was probably going to be frozen in no time.

They had me lay on the bed on my right side and wangled the bed around so they could stretch my left boob into the vice machine. That didn't really work so I had to flip my head to the foot of the bed and lay on my left side sort of propped up with wedges.

It was sort of bizarre the way it seemed like trial and error to get me positioned. It was almost like they'd never done this before and it struck me as funny that they would have a difficult time getting the large mass of floppy flesh to get into position.

I asked, "How the heck do you do this with women with peanut sized breasts?" They laughed but didn't have an answer.

Once they got me squeezed into the jaws of the vice I'm sure they could have pulled the bed out from under me and I'da hung there by my boob. I suspected that they probably wouldn't even need to put freezing in because all feeling and sensation was soon gone from the massive pressure.

Then I had a thought: I could probably avoid surgery altogether if they'd just tighten up the machine one more notch. My breast would have popped like a giant zit and the whole procedure would have been over with.

They took some images and put them on the screen. These were not nearly as beautiful and awe-inspiring as the recent ultra sound images of Baby X that I got to see 2 weeks ago when I went in with Jade and Ken.

For some reason I was expecting to see a defined little spot like a peanut or kidney bean, but in fact it looked like I was housing a fuzzy tarantula or something.

"Ok, we are lined up nicely. Dr Chewy(I'm sure his name has a more Chinese spelling) will been here momentarily. Don't move." Yeah. Like that was an option.

It didn't take long for the freezing to take effect and Dr Chewy expertly inserted the fine wire needle. They call it a wire. It's more like a sword.

Since the wire was inserted on the underside, and the girls are heavy and hang low, especially when unsupported, it was obvious that I was going to have a belly button piercing by the time I got back to the OR. So they covered the wire with a paper cup and taped it to my chest. I looked just like Madonna in the 80's.

I wished I had brought my camera. Oh well I thought, I'll get Alb to take a picture with his phone when I get into my bed back at Day Surgery.

I didn't even get to get into a bed. They met me half way across the floor and said they were calling for me in the OR already.

Before I knew it, I was laying on a block of ice in another equally cold freezer room getting hooked up to wires and needles. I reminded them not to over anesthetize me, I had to be awake for the first Canuck puck drop of the season. At 10:05 I closed my eyes.

At 10:40 I heard the Dr say, "Mrs Ziemer everything went really well." I opened my eyes and I was awake. It had been my intention to take advantage of the situation and sleep all day, but no. I was awake. I wasn't groggy. I wasn't nauseous. Thank God for His mercies large and small.

My throat was irritated from the tube that had been inserted. I coughed and hacked like a smoker for half an hour before they got tired of listening to me in the recovery room and wheeled me to the Day Surgery room. I knew that I just needed a coffee and all would be well. They don't serve coffee in bed there so I called for my jeans and shoes. At 11:30 I was walking out of the hospital feeling in fine form.

I was still feeling wide awake when I got home so I had toast and coffee and made some phone calls then flicked on the tv. About 1:00 my body was reminding me that my left breast had been frozen and this was no longer the case. I took a couple of T3's and life was good again.

God is good. Thanks for all your prayers. It'll be 7-10 days before I get the results from pathology.

And that's all I have to say about that. Life is like a box of chocolates, so run Forrest run.