Bopsy Bopsy Bopsy

The waiting is the hardest part

First, let me say that I’m fine. My health is good. I have no ailments beside the usual middle-aged ones, like a sore wrist from stirring soup too vigorously. But the past two months haven’t been super fun.

It all started at my annual mammogram in December. I had a 3-D scan, which for some reason my mind likes to call an R2-D2 scan. I don’t know why this is. Would R2-D2 take a break from hanging out with C-3PO on the spaceship to squeeze boobs? Maybe. I don’t know the Star Wars universe that well. He might be a perv.

That said, my breast imaging place now has short pink capes with little snaps on them, so when I walked around in mine I kind of felt like Lando Calrissian if he ever decided to observe Breast Cancer Awareness month in Cloud City. Shit. Maybe I do know the Star Wars universe that well.

ohhhhh Billie Dee

But because they saw something “suspicious” on my mammogram, I was scheduled to come in a month later to get retested. An entire month. Good thing I don’t have an active imagination and a newfound interest in medical googling!

Sidenote: I have recently diagnosed three friends with frozen shoulder. And by “diagnosed”, I mean that when they told me their shoulder hurt, I said, “It’s probably frozen shoulder because you’re an oldie” and then I asked for a $30 co-pay.

Not my cat

My second R2-D2 mammogram showed areas of concern, so my pink cape and I were sent to another room to get an ultrasound. After I sprawled on the chair and got into a 1950’s pin-up pose with my arm behind my head, resisting the urge to say, “Paint me like one of your French girls,” they squirted some cold jelly on me and a male doctor pressed the ultrasound wand to my breast while he looked at his monitor and said things like:

“Huh.”

“Can’t tell what that is.”

“Is that a swirl?”

“Hoooo boy.”

To which I replied, “Oh my god, just tell me if I’m dying.”

He then stopped what he was doing and said that I needed to get a bopsy.

“What’s a bopsy?” I asked, and he went into his spiel about what a bopsy was and how they’d use needles to get tissue samples. I said “Okay, thanks”, wandered off to put my clothes back on, and texted my husband that I had to get a bopsy. “What’s a bopsy?” he replied, and I said, “No idea.”

Twenty minutes later when I pulled into my garage, I said the word “biopsy” out loud in a thick Lubbock accent like the doctor’s. Ohhhh.

A week later I went back in and had a core needle biopsy, which hurt a little. But this time I had a woman doctor who was much more reassuring and who thrilled my little medical investigator heart by showing me the images of my breast on her office computer. “Can I get that in an 8x10?” I asked and then was embarrassed because I felt myself sliding headfirst into Medical Humor. And from there it’s just a quick trip to buying big red glasses, a floral top, and being the funniest person at the cruise ship dining room table.

Unfortunately, the first bopsy didn’t reach what they needed to reach so I was invited to come back a few days later for a more intense one. By “more intense”, I mean I was squeezed for 25 minutes in a mammogram machine while they inserted a long needle into my breast. It was like when Princess Leia and Luke were in that trash compactor on the Death Star and — okay, no more. No mas Star Wars.

Perhaps worse than the pain of the tests, however, is the agony of waiting on the biopsy results. And it’s not like I could click over to the news to distract me when there’s a new horror every minute. “Waiting on biopsy results” seems to be the prevailing mood of America right now. But I finally got the results of both biopsies and they were benign. B9! Whew. My shoulders finally left my ears and I stopped medical Googling. (However, I’m pretty sure I now have one year of med school under my belt.)

But wait! There’s more! I then went to the dermatologist for my annual mole patrol and guess what? Bopsy! The doctor found a suspicious mole on my thigh, which is not a place that receives a lot of sunlight so it was odd. But after another long week of waiting for the results, googling in another medical specialty, I got the good call: benign.

I’m now taking a break from bopsies for as long as possible.

Thanks to so many friends for giving me rides, advice, making me laugh, and checking in. Most women will deal with this type of scary test at least once or twice in their lives, sometimes more. And not to get too serious, but I highly and strongly encourage all women to get their tests done now that Captain Brain Worm is leading our nation’s health and women’s health research has been gutted. Pap smear, mammogram, skin check, bone density, bloodwork, eye exam, hearing exam — the works. We need to keep up our strength and our energy.

And if all of those tests result in a bopsy or two, give me a shout. I’ll cheer you up with some Medical Humor.

Thanks for reading!

—Wendi