And then I got the call to come back for an ultrasound

Early in the morning, the day after Christmas, I got a phone call from the mammogram place. They had seen something they’d like to get a better look at, could I come in the following week? Again, it would be pretty early in the morning, although not as early as the day before.

Now, the phone call for the ultrasound was not entirely unexpected (although pretty unwanted). The radiologist had told me at the mammogram that because it was a first-time mammogram, and they didn’t have any records to compare it to, chances were good that I’d have to come in for a second look-over. Now, why they can’t just fucking DO IT THEN, when it’s your first time, I don’t know – maybe because it would make entirely too much sense, and wouldn’t cause nearly the same amount of emotional drama? Who knows.

So, my head knew that the call was not entirely unexpected, and that it didn’t necessarily mean A BAD THING, just that there was something more they wanted to see. But that didn’t mean that my heart didn’t immediately freak the fuck out. It was at this point that I reached out to a few of my friends. If I didn’t reach out to you? Please don’t be insulted. The mathmatical formula I used to decide who to reach out to was a word problem of “are they boob-talk-friendly” and “are they on Google + so I can keep this private, IE, NOT ON FACEBOOK” and “do I know they’ve had a mammogram and/or a call-back and/or have breastfed children, so that just randomly bringing up boobtalk isn’t going to get them to close off” with a minor addition of “if I tell them about a call-back are they more likely to give me reassurance or more likely show a need for me to reassure them”. Also I decided to message, and messaged, in the space of about five minutes so if I didn’t think of you within those five minutes, sorry. It’s nothing personal.

They, of course, all immediately reassured me that call-backs were normal, that boob science is scary, reminded me that it’s not like they wanted me to come back in THAT VERY DAY, and that a week’s wait meant “not an emergency”.

So let’s see… that was a Thursday, so I had the weekend – yay!- to go back and forth in my head about worried/not worried. My friends were absolutely lovely about talking me off the cliff, but you know… there was still some part of my head that was all, “OK, well, if I have to get any kind of surgery, if I can put it off for at least a week, I’ve already got January’s club yarn dyed and I can get February and March done in the next week if I had to. It won’t be fun, but at least it’ll be finished, so if I need some recovery time…”… thoughts like that. What I’d have to do if I had to take a month vacation for health reasons. What I’d have to do if I had to take two months off. Whether it would be worth it to try to hire someone to finish a few things for me, or just… coast on what I have finished… and absolute worst case scenario, how to divide all my crafting supplies between Sharon and Tim’s three sisters, and what sort of chemo hat pattern I should knit myself. Hey, none of that came to pass – obviously – but I can’t say it’s entirely a bad thing to think about those kinds of things. Because then you have a plan, kind of like thinking about what you’d do if your car drove off a bridge and you were submerged. If you’ve thought about what you’d do, before that even happens, you’re less likely to panic.

So, anyway. I spent that weekend with this in my head (I think this was even the weekend that Greg and Caitlin were in town and we met everyone at Satchel’s, so, sorry, Caitlin, if I seemed distant that weekend! I love my yarn!), and talking to a few girlfriends on Google +, and the morning of the ultrasound I got up and put on my two-piece outfit and didn’t use deodorant and drove across town to the steel and glass building. And I didn’t plan this, but the rest of that part of the story will have to wait until tomorrow, because today has just been a comedy of ceramical errors and now I have to leave to go meet Lynn (hi, Lynn! ::waves::) for an early dinner, followed by knitting at Broken Shelves.

More tomorrow!