The Bibopsy

I went in to the get my bibopsy today. First, I'd just like to say --people who work at breast care centers (which is where I went for my bibopsy) are INCREDIBLY nice. They treat you like they are just delighted to see you and then they cradle you in sweetness. Seriously. I wonder how they keep it up with every patient who walks in. But I like it.

So, I changed into the very awkward gown that they give you at this place (I wore it for the mammogram too). It's like any hospital gown except the tie is in the front, thus risk of exposure is from a VERY different angle. Sitting in their waiting room, I am in danger of exposing myself to random other people who may be in the waiting room pretty much the entire time. This subsequently makes it very hard for me to focus on whatever article I am reading in whatever random magazine I picked up.  

So, for this bibopsy they wanted four tissue samples. I got to watch everything on an ultrasound screen, which I was riveted by. They took this needle and kinda punched at the mass. It mechanically sounded like a powered stapler and I imagine it functioned like a harpoon-equipped whole punch. It punched out a piece of tissue in the mass and then it punched back out of the mass with said tissue. It didn't hurt. But it kind of reverberated in my chest. I wasn't expecting it to be quite that violent of a process (violent in the most gentle sense of the word). 

After the doctor got all the tissue she wanted, she put a piece of metal in there, to mark that they've "been there". They have promised me repeatedly that this little piece of titanium will not set off metal detectors. Heaven forbid if this causes me to get felt up every time I go to the airport. 

They patched me up afterwards  (it was only a 1/8 inch incision so they essentially put a band-aid on it that I have to wear for a week). Then they said I needed to keep ice on it for 15 minutes of every hour for the next day --- at which point, I said, "I'm sorry. You want me to put an ice pack where?"

It made it better when they prescribed that I eat chocolate and watch movies for the rest of the night.

The real comedy was AFTER. I had to stick the ice pack in my bra and then return to work because I had  training session with a guy from the finance dept. on our financial software. And while the ice pack is somewhat small, it's large enough that it makes the girls a little, uh,.. well, you can imagine. I wasn't quite sure what to do about the situation, so I hoped that my clothes (loose shirt and cardigan) made that general area relatively inconspicuous so that said guy from finance would take no notice. Yes. You read that right. I knowingly walked into a meeting with a man who didn't know me from Adam, with sigificantly disproportionate girls, and said nothing, Now that I think back on this, I picture this thing having happened on an episode of the Carol Burnett show or I Love Lucy. Sometimes, life is just funny.