The Invisible Black Woman

The day had finally arrived for my test. Needless to say, I got very little sleep the night before. I didn’t expect to, if I’m being honest. I reminded myself that the good news was that I’d know one way or the other what the outcome would be. According to the nurse practitioner, if the test came back abnormal, I would have to do additional scans. If those additional scans came back suspicious, then I’d have to have a biopsy done. I couldn’t quite remember if she told me whether they’d do those scans the same day or not. Honestly, I don’t even remember if I’d asked. My subconscious, on some level, probably clouded my desire to ask as a defense mechanism. I can’t imagine having to do that telephone marathon again to get myself scheduled for yet another scan.

Per the prep instructions, I wore no powders, perfumes, or lotions from the waist up. The appointment was that afternoon, so I decided to wear deodorant until right before we headed out, then I’d use a wet wipe to remove it. Of course, in the hubbub of heading out on time, I forgot to do just that.

That wasn’t the only thing I forgot, unfortunately. Halfway there, I remembered the other thing I forgot.

“SHIT,” I said out loud.

“You forgot something?”

Hubby knows me entirely too well.

“I forgot my doctor’s order.”

“Shit.”

Shit indeed.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Well, it’s too late to turn around, so I’m gonna try something.”

I quickly pulled up the MyChart app and looked up the phone number for the place that wrote me the order and gave them a buzz.

A young man answered the phone and asked me how he could help.

“I sure hope you can help me. I’m on my way to my follow-up test and I left my order at home. Any chance you could fax it over?”

I’ve never been happier to have years of healthcare under my belt and having had to do this one time too many myself for patients who came in to the hospital without their doctor’s order.

“Absolutely not,” he said, but I could hear the twinkle in his voice.

I chuckled.

“Of course, what’s the fax number?”

“So, I was hoping you could pull that up for me if I gave you the name of the location and their phone number.”

“Sure, what’s the name of the location?”

I gave him the name and he went to work looking up the facility. He asked me to confirm the address, which I did.

“Hmmmm,” he said.

It wasn’t a good hmmm.

“They only have a phone number. I’m not seeing a fax number.”

Dammit, Murphy.

“Okay, let me give them a call and call you right back.”

“How about this: let me call them and ask them for the fax number. I’ll make sure they get the order so you can have your test done.”

If I was there in person, I’d have given him a big hug.

“Oh, that would be so awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Of course! Good luck, okay?”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”

With that major crisis averted, we resumed the drive. The facility was 45 minutes away, so we still had about 15 minutes to go.

And, of course, because I am all about “trust but verify,” I gave them a call.

“Hi, I have an afternoon appointment with you. Just calling to make sure you have my order?”

“Yes, we just got it by fax. You’re all set.”

Now I could breathe—kinda.

We got there 15 minutes before my appointment, signed in, and had a seat. We sat there and listened to the receptionists at the desk commiserate on a coworker who was a mutual enemy of theirs while we waited. It made for interesting listening and I appreciated the distraction.

Then the door swung open and I was called to the back. As is my custom, I asked if hubby could come with. Surprisingly, she said no. I didn’t push. I turned to hubby, shook my head no and he nodded and sat back down.

When I got to the back, I was escorted to a row of “stalls,” for lack of a better description. I was asked to undress from the waist up, put on a paper gown then have a seat. They would come get me shortly.

The stalls were a bit bigger than a traditional dressing room stall and had a coat hook as well as a cushioned bench. I waited for what seemed like an eternity. It had been 5 minutes at most.

A nurse came and got me and took me to the exam room. There was a large mechanical arm protruding from the wall that sat in the center of the room. The floor had several markers and over to the left was a computer perched on a counter. There was a technician at the monitor punching in keys into the screen, presumably calibrating the instrument that would tell me my fate.

The tech greeted me then began to give me instructions.

“Okay, so I’m going to do the first scan, ok. You’re going to feel a lot of pressure since we have to take a much closer look. This has a magnifying lens that allows us to do that. Depending on how that goes, you will either be done or you’ll need to have more imaging. I will let you know and we’ll do the imaging right after.”

Well, that answered that question about whether I’d have to wait. At least if push came to shove, I’d leave there with or without instructions to have a biopsy done.

I just nodded and smiled.

She came over to me and asked me to stand where the line was and then poke my chest forward. Then she proceeded to place my right breast into the mechanical arm.

She took several different pictures and angles. I alternated between holding my breath and having my breast adjusted in different ways within the thick plastic plates.

Forever and a day later, she told me she was done and additional scans would be needed.

Fraggle Rock my life.

I would wait in the room with my gown own until they called me back for the additional tests.

As I headed back to the stall, this is where I wished hubby was back there with me. I didn’t even have my phone to let him know what was what. But then I thought to myself there was no point in punching him in the gut twice. Might as well wait until I knew if I got the all-clear or if we were headed for a biopsy.

So I sat there, on the bench, nervous as all get out. I left the door to my stall open, partly because I wanted to see them coming and mostly because I didn’t want them to forget I was there.

At least 10 minutes later, I saw a tech headed toward me. She was making no eye contact, but I did my best to not read into it. Maybe she just felt a little sorry for me.

“Okay, we’re going to do an ultrasound now.”

Then I remembered what I’d blocked out until now from the nurse practitioner. The ultrasound was what they would do after the diagnostic mammogram if they still were concerned. After the ultrasound came the biopsy.

Christ. On. The. Cross.

“Okay.” I didn’t know what more I could say at this point.

This time I went to a different room with a hospital bed and an ultrasound machine.

The ultrasound technician greeted me and told me what they’d be doing. I did the best I could to think positive thoughts and imagine myself somewhere else as she pressed and prodded my right breast like nobody’s business. Pain aside, I mostly just wished that it was nothing but a false alarm. Once she was done, she examined the screen intently. I was holding my breath most of the time. She then tells me she’ll be right back.

When she comes back, she’s brought a friend. At this point, my heart was doing its level best to leave me behind altogether. Judging by her outfit, I was pretty confident she was a doctor, since she was wearing a white lab coat—well, that is what I assumed anyway. The doctor stares intently at the screen, moving from picture to picture. At this point, I have absolutely no idea what she or I are looking at, but I keep hoping she’ll put me out of my misery.

“Ok, you’re all set. You have what we call a”—I have no idea what name she used. All I know is that she thought it was a high likelihood it was benign and nothing of concern. I almost leapt off the bed and did a praise dance.

“But we’ll want you to come back in 6 months just to be sure that it hasn’t grown in size.”

Say what now?

So all of that jumping through hoops only to be told, “it’s probably nothing, but you should come back 6 months from now just so we can be sure it’s nothing.” Mmmkay.

Honestly I didn’t know how I was supposed to take that. On one hand, I was extremely grateful. There are countless women who think it’s absolutely nothing, then go from nodule to cancer overnight. So I’m in no way trying to minimize the very real struggle these women endure. I just wasn’t expecting them to say I would need to wait 6 months just to be sure.

I went back to my stall, got dressed and headed back to the waiting room. Hubby scanned my face to see if he could pick up any trace of which way things landed. I gave him a quick smile. I went to the front desk, scheduled my 6-mo checkup, then we headed to our car.

“So?”

“The doc says I’m good, but I have to be back in 6 months to be sure.”

“That’s great!”

“I guess.”

“What do you mean you guess? It’s good, right? Otherwise she’d had you do the biopsy.”

“Yeah, probably. I just don’t like that I have to wait 6 months to know for sure.”

“It’s still great news.”

“It is. I’d be a wreck if I had to do a biopsy.”

“Good. One less thing to worry about.”

At this point, I’d love to say that I concurred with him and I did in fact see this as one less thing to worry about, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. This 1.3-cm nodule had now lodged itself into my brain, in a corner, and I knew full well that would be the case until I got the true all clear in 6 months. This coming from someone who is not the worrier in the relationship. I wasn’t sure if that was a foreboding omen or not, but I decided to brush it aside.

About a week or so later, I got a letter in the mail from the radiology center. The part that made me laugh out loud and sigh at the same time was this tidbit in the letter, “… not likely cancer.” Doesn’t exactly seem resounding and definitive. When you’re waiting for results on something, “not likely” is not a ringing endorsement. But I digress.

I decided that despite my misgivings, I wouldn’t borrow trouble from a 6-months-from-today problem. Whether I liked it or not, there was nothing I could do right now that would change when I’d have my follow-up test. So there was no point in stressing out about a possible issue that was being termed as not likely. The only thing I silently prayed in that moment was if the outcome should not fall in my favor in 6 months, that I’d have the grace and strength to face it.

Given everything that was happening at the current moment—the state of my job, my health, physical and mental, I decided that for now, I had much, much bigger fish to fry.