The Mammogram Behind the Curtain

Do you have any family nearby to help you?

.…The ultrasound tech asks while adjusting the wand over my right breast. I try not to cry. I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first.

Is he asking because—of the information he’s gathered through this casual, if not totally awkward, conversation—he knows I’m a stay-at-home-mom, and that’s a hard job?

Or is he asking because he doesn’t like what he sees on the screen and knows I’ll need help once I get the results?

This was supposed to be easy—a quick in-and-out. We’ll take some pictures, the first technician said. If she (and I don’t know who she is, some unknown doctor hiding behind the curtain in OZ) doesn’t like what she sees, there may be more pictures. If she still doesn’t like it, we’ll fit you in for an ultrasound.

I’m not worried. I only made this appointment because that’s apparently what you do if you’re a woman who just turned forty: you schedule your first mammogram. I barely crack A Court of Mist and Fury before the tech is back to take me for what I expect will be a super easy, if not a little uncomfortable, experience. She takes the pics, guides me back to the room where my book and clothes are waiting, and tells me not to dress yet.

I crack the book again. With any luck I’ll be out of here with enough time to crank out a few words on the laptop waiting in my car. My favorite coffee shop is only a few miles away and I’ve been saving myself for a honey lavender latte—

We need to take some more pictures.

Huh. Okay. I follow the tech back to the room where she positions my right breast for more images centered around a spot that she must’ve seen something. I don’t ask many questions because I know the technicians aren’t supposed to answer them. When she brings me back to the room with my clothes, I don’t bother opening the book. I don’t want to read. I don’t want to think. Something is wrong.

But no. No. There is no history of breast cancer in my family. None. I would be the first and it just doesn’t make sense. Of all the cancers, I was never worried about this.

My stomach tumbles when the tech comes back and tells me to grab my clothes. SHE, the great and powerful OZ that I still haven’t laid eyes on, wants an ultrasound.

No. This is the worst-case scenario. This was supposed to be routine. There’s nothing wrong. My boobs feel fine. The right one, certainly, has never caused any trouble.

I sit, still wrapped in my upper gown, in a waiting room. Dr. Phil is on TV. It could be an hour before I go in for the ultrasound and I might be late to pick up my son from preschool. I haven’t told my husband about what’s happening because he’ll worry and that’s not what I need right now. Not when I’m trying to keep out of that rabbit hole myself.

I try to sound casual, cavalier, nothing to worry about here dear, when I text him. But it’s a lie. He knows it. He agrees to pick up our son. I wait. Other women pass the room on the way to their appointments. The techs offer them gowns—do you want warmed, or room-temperature?—show them to changing rooms, bring them to imaging, usher them out. I’m still here.

Then the ultrasound tech, a red-haired man named Josh, brings me to the room where he’s centered on that one spot on the right, the place where she is concerned I have cancer. It’s taking forever. I struggle to answer his questions because I don’t want to think about life or my family or what happens next. I don’t want chemo. I don’t want radiation. I feel sick already, thinking about it. I remember reading that breast cancer results from a lifetime of people-pleasing. Who the hell have I ever pleased? What kind of deep-seeded neurosis am I going to have to unearth to pull the roots of breast cancer? I’m going to have to juice like a motherfucker. I’m going to be Chris-Beat-Cancer’s number one follower. I wish Sue, my old boss, was still alive to put me on the right healing path. I still remember the enzymes we used on her cancer clients, before I was one of them.

And…I’ve stumbled down the rabbit hole. It’s better letting my mind run with all the crap I’m going to have to do to fix this, fix me, all the things that will have to change, than settle into the reality that this illness came out of nowhere and now it will be my life, and my son—

My son.

I cannot think about him. Hot tears brim in my eyes. Then the tech asks if I have any family nearby to help me.

Help me through treatments. Help me through childcare. Help me through the trauma of this disease.

No. I can’t plunge deeper just yet. Not until I know for sure.

The waiting is forever. I text my husband again. He won’t admit it but he’s already checking my life insurance policy, planning on selling our house, bracing for the absolute worst. I can’t tell if we are a match made in heaven or hell on days like this.

Then a nurse with a smile pulls me through a side door of the waiting room. She’s holding a piece of paper, and in the middle in bold it says: Normal/Benign.

Normal/Benign.

It doesn’t register at first that I’m okay. That the new life my frantic mind had been plotting doesn’t exist. That I don’t actually have cancer.

I’m relieved but it’s mostly disbelief that follows me out—it’s finally my turn to leave—past the other women on today’s mammogram schedule, up the elevator, and out into the cold, rainy street. My nerves are buzzing. I want so desperately to just break down and cry to get it all out, but I hold it together and hustle to the car. There isn’t time for writing today. No relaxing hour at the coffee shop. I call my husband; I’m out. I’m okay. And I can pick up Graham.

I’m out. I’m okay. And I don’t have cancer.

Even though my life didn’t fundamentally shift into something unrecognizable from a horrible diagnosis, I feel compelled not to let this feeling go. That I can use this energy to live better or just live more. Because for a few agonizing hours, life as I knew it teetered on the brink of collapse, toed the edge of a cliff and nearly toppled over the side.

But it didn’t fall. Not yet. Not this time.