Good News

What do you do when you get the recall phone call. They want more pictures of your breast and its not because they want to hang the photos up in their lockers.

I wasn’t really sure of the official playbook so my wholly customized reaction process went something like this:

1) My official reaction: Don’t tell (hardly) anyone until I  know this actually IS bad news. If you read my very recent post Bad News you know that medical problems are being handed out in my family like hor’dourves and another cancer diagnosis was not going to help anyone – least of all my (grown) children who are already reeling from receiving that news from their father. I felt this was the right decision at the time but it did lead to a bit of a mess with my stomach. See recent post on worries. Not to mention about a 30% reduction in my work productivity. No wonder I was distracted. I was making contingency plans in my head during most of my waking hours.

2) My official action – as close to a gesture of defiance as I could get: I immediately signed up for a 3 year magazine subscription. I figured the magazines might require my physical presence on this earth for at least a few years more. Silly I know but it felt good at the time.

After playing twister (almost literally) with the mammogram machine this morning I was told the thickness they saw was deemed ok – nothing to worry about. I cannot tell you how I danced out of the clinic into the sunshine . I would have had a glass of champagne but it was a bit early in the day.

Of three of us waiting for news this morning two of us were able to leave with our happy news and able to breath freely for the first time in 10 days or so.

The third had to have an ultrasound.

I can look up the statistics but I know they are somehow nearly that. I have a sister and a best friend an aunt and several former co-workers who had to run that tremendous emotional and physical gauntlet you begin when you are not sent out of the clinic with good news.

If you spin around in a crowd you will hit one or more.

Make it stop.