Catia Bitching Cancer

Someone please tell me how doctors’ offices’ schedules work. A few days ago I called USC (Kaiser contracts out on this) for my MRI appointment. The radiologist who saw my right boob ultrasound recommended I get an MRI, just in case (yeah, right!). As I said, I called them and the nice woman on the phone suggested a Nov 3rd appointment, after apparently discarding a number of other dates (‘how about…? No, that wouldn’t work…wait a minute…how about then…?’). I go ‘um…I am having a mastectomy on that date…don’t think I can be getting an MRI at the same time….’ She says ‘oh gee, we need to get you in sooner then: how about October 25th?’ What’s up with that???!!! How come Oct 25th was taken thirty seconds ago?

This goes back to my arguments with the surgeons…many of you know that I have my reservations about demanding fast resolution at the expense of others…or demanding resolution at all…but fear and a survival instinct get the best of me and when I talk to surgeons and doctors I become the ‘difficult patient’ of Seinfeld’s Elaine’s memory. I keep asking when and why not sooner, and explaining how difficult it is to wait, to live each minute with the awareness that cancer is growing in your body and the fear that at any second it could grow to the point of no return. And they invariably tell me that *biologically* it makes no difference to wait two more weeks…except that the two weeks have become two months since I discovered the lumps in my breasts. So anyway, I always leave those conversations with my surgeons both frustrated and defeated: I don’t get an earlier appointment, and I don’t know *for sure* that my cancer won’t grow to the point of no return in those days. I do trust my surgeon. I have no choice but trust her, don’t I? It’s either I trust her, and believe that she has the best information and skills available to anyone at this moment in time, or I don’t, and then I’m at square one, not knowing who to go to and having wasted two months looking for a surgeon that would take the cancer out of me.

But if I trust her to tell me the truth (and I accept that this must be an act of faith), I also have to trust that she is scheduling me as soon as she can, as soon as my case requires. But then how come all these appointments can be changed at a whim, just when you say some magic word that you don’t even know about? So what’s the magic word to mention to surgeons to get a mastectomy done sooner than after two months from discovery (one from diagnosis?).

Then today I got my MRI. Poked once again in the right arm (I never feared injections, but they are starting to get annoying), injected some dye, given ear plugs to soften the noise of the machine, stuck in a tunnel, belly down, boobs sticking out of two holes, for a little more than 15 minutes, warned that if I moved we would have to call the whole thing off and do it again in no less than 3 days…of course, I went into my zen mode, thought calming thoughts, and fell asleep. I woke up when my left arm jerked involuntarily, but it was all over. The technician took me out and told me (he was joking I swear!) I had been snoring. I had lunch in the USC hospital cafeteria (they have the *exact* same food as USC main campus cafeterias, can you believe that???), while waiting for a copy of the MRI films to bring to my surgeon.

As I look at the films, two white circles shining through in the picture of my left breast, and a series of white lines, like spiderwebs springing out of them, I tell myself I cannot possibly be alarmed, as I am not a radiologist trained at reading them.

It’s my sister Raffaella’s birthday today. She’s 36. TANTI AUGURI LELLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Monday, mom and dad will be coming from Italy to stay here for a little over a month. It’s comforting and dreadful at the same time. Can it be?

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