I have no clue how many people have stumbled upon this blog. I hadn't thought about the fact that when I comment on someone elses blog, it leads them back to me. I hope nothing I say here upsets or offends anyone, but I think most of us blog for ourselves. Call it therapy.
A couple of months ago i realized that I had met my deductible on my insurance, so why not use it. I'm getting old---well, older. My birthday is just over a week away, but that is definitely something for another post. It's been almost two years since I hit the big 5-0 when they suddenly start telling you it's time for this test or that test so I decided to go for it and use the health insurance. I started small. I made an appointment with the lady OB-GYN in town. Now in case anybody is reading this, I highly recommend finding a woman GYN. Wow, it made such a difference. I have had many checkups, have had five kids. I have been known to lay on a doctors table and read a book while getting a pelvic exam. But it is never pleasant. However, with a woman you lay down and about ten seconds later (it seems) she says "ok, all done, sit up." Wow! So I got the pap test which I honestly haven't done for years. The nurse looked at me when I told her how long like I was crazy. I said 'when you have no health insurance and five kids, guess who goes to the doctor?' She recommended a mammogram which I knew was coming. Ok, got that scheduled, got the results from the pap, normal. Cool. I had a mammo about ten years ago when they were doing free ones in Nevada. Ok, piece of cake. Yeah, right.
Imagine my surprise when I got the call that said my mammo results needed to be redone. Something called a spot compression which is fancy talk for 'let's smash a little more to get a better picture.' Ok, my sisters both said they have done this a lot. So I wasn't too worried. Of course, the fact that I was doing another mammo plus an ultrasound had me a little nervous.
Then I walked into the room and saw the x-ray. The lump they had found was bigger than I expected. But I was still feeling pretty confident. I was able to call the radiologist after 3 to get the results rather than wait. I hated calling cuz i was still at work and knew what would happen if the news was bad. So of course, I held together on the phone and then fell apart. He told me that I would have to have surgery as soon as I could to have the lump removed. He said he couldn't say benign or malignant either way, but he wanted the whole lump taken out, not just a needle biopsy. I had already had an appointment with a surgeon in town about the routine colonoscopy. I was very impressed with him, and we had talked about a few tests that would eventually lead to having my hiatal hernia fixed and gall bladder removed. All which would make me feel so much better. Although having a bad gall bladder and constant nausea has helped me lose over ten pounds.
I got the appointment with Dr. O'Connor. Both my girls went with me. And he told me we needed surgery as soon as we could schedule it and explained the whole procedure. This was on the 12th and they said they could do the surgery either Thur or Fri the same week. I choose Friday. I called family and told them what was going on. I was really nervous about the surgery, but I finally realized that was because every other time I've had surgery it was because I was really sick and had no choice. I wasn't worried about the results. At least not then.
