Biopsy
Count All This — Chapter 9: you have to love your machines
Just when Jo Kasten’s adult son encounters schizophrenia, she discovers she has breast cancer. Meanwhile, her marriage faces a test. Count All This is a story about love and loyalty, addiction and madness. This is the ninth chapter. Find the first chapter here.
When I told my friend Karen I had a biopsy scheduled Monday, she asked if I wanted her to go with me. That’s when I realized that something serious was happening. Taken off guard, I said no, I would probably go myself, or I would ask Larry to come if I wanted company. Larry hadn’t been with me to a doctor’s appointment since our children were born — 19, 18, and 14 years before. But I asked him anyway, motivated by Karen’s offer, and he agreed to escort me, a bit perplexed by my need.
When Monday came, Larry sat in the main waiting room near the patronizing attendant while another worker took me to the back, gave me a gown to change into, and told me to sit in the room full of gowned women waiting. It seemed smaller this time, and quieter. The chairs were arranged in a square. There were a dozen women sitting in them, but only two were talking, whispering quietly.
When it was my turn to go further, a nurse led me down a dark hall to the brightly-lit biopsy room. It looked a lot like the room Eddy had had his hand stitched up in: clean and white, but cluttered with big chunks of random, metal equipment, like a hygienic garage. The doctor who had reviewed my mammogram films was sitting on a wheeled stool before an odd looking padded high table with a circular hole cut out near one end. They asked me to lie on the table with my left breast protruding through the hole. That was frightening. What would they do to that lonely, exposed breast? It made me feel a bit like a torture victim and a bit like a circus side show freak and a bit like a sex industry worker. But I did as I was told, presenting my naked breast through the hole for Dr. Brand to perform his experiments on, numbing my consciousness as much as possible by picturing Larry reading magazines in the lobby nearby.
How would this biopsy proceed? I thought I had been told there were two types: needle biopsies and core biopsies, but I couldn’t remember which one I was having. Ever the optimist, I assumed Dr. Brand would numb my skin with a little cotton swab and then insert a fine needle in a painless and short procedure. So it was disturbing when I heard him turn on a clanking, noisy machine. “I guess he’s doing the core biopsy,” I thought, envisioning geologists with big metal drills cutting samples out of Mother Earth. The machine ground on, and I felt a painful pinch, and then the doctor made a muffled curse and rolled away from the table on his little stool.
“What’s wrong?” the nurse asked.
“There’s too much blood. Get the gauze.”
He had protective goggles on, like a welder, and seemed both upset and annoyed as he fumbled with my breast and the piece of medical equipment in his hand. Soon the nurse took over my care, leaving him to manhandle the machinery, asking me very gently to roll over on my back and pressing a piece of gauze to my breast to staunch the bleeding.
“What happened?” I asked the nurse. “Did you get the biopsy?”
“No. Something is wrong with this machine,” Dr. Brand responded without turning to look at me. He was standing at the counter, fiddling with the equipment, turning it off and on while he examined it. I stared at his back.
“We also went into a sensitive area that started bleeding,” explained the nurse. “That’s not usual. We’ll have to go back in at another site.”
“Oh, boy!” I quipped. It felt like my responsibility to put the room at ease, like the hostess at a party with two embarrassed guests. As I lay on the table beneath a bright, circular light, the nurse joined the doctor in huddling over the malfunctioning equipment.
“It’s spinning the wrong direction,” said the doctor. “The directional control isn’t working.” He tapped it lightly on the counter top, a time-honored technique for repairing broken machinery.
“Did you push the button?”
“Yes, yes! Of course! Try getting another needle extension,” he directed her. “Maybe this one is causing the problem.”
The nurse left the room and came back a few long, silent moments later with a new part, but once it was swapped out, the problem wasn’t resolved.
“You could always go out and get my husband in the waiting room. He could probably fix it,” I offered from my prone position on the table. They turned toward me in unison, as if surprised that I was there.
“Oh, really?” the doctor asked, momentarily intrigued. “Does he work with medical equipment?”
“No. Not specifically. But he’s good at fixing things in general.” I thought how comforting it would be to have Larry in the room, fussing with the equipment, making dry jokes. But the doctor wasn’t impressed and turned abruptly back to his work. I could see by the hunch of his shoulders that he was ill at ease, angry at the equipment, which meant he probably wouldn’t be able to fix it. You have to love your machines, Larry had told me more than once, bending over a broken radio, or a lamp, or a bicycle part on his workbench, like a tender parent over a sick child.
Eventually, the doctor decided to continue with the procedure. He would use the machine in a different way, compensating for its malfunction. This didn’t inspire confidence, but I turned over on the table anyway, presenting my now-wounded breast through the aperture, doing as I was told.
The doctor re-seated himself on the rolling stool beneath me, plastic goggles over his eyes. I imagined them splattered with my blood. He switched on the machine, filling the room with angry sound. I felt a pinching pain in my breast and willed the time to pass quickly. He didn’t stop this time. He didn’t curse and pull away.
“Did you get it?” I asked hopefully when he withdrew the machinery.
“Two more. We’re not quite finished yet.”
“We have to make sure we get good samples so we don’t have to do this again,” the nurse said.
There was more noise, more pain, more helpless waiting. Finally, it was over, and once again I was lying on my back, with two bandages pressed to my breast this time. After a few minutes, the nurse helped me to sit up on the table. “We got really great samples,” she enthused, directing my attention to a computer monitor. “Look at those. Aren’t they beautiful?”
On the blue screen were several long, white images, kinking and curling around like fat worms. The nurse seemed to be waiting for my agreement.
“I don’t know,” I shook my head, laughing a little. “I’m not sure they’re beautiful. I’ll hold judgment until we find out what they mean.”
That was the ninth chapter of my novel, Count All This. To continue, follow the free chapter links below or buy a digital copy of the whole book on Amazon, where leaving a rating or review will help others find my story.
>>>NEXT CHAPTER
<<
NEW CHAPTER ALERT! Here’s a head’s up to people who’ve clapped or commented on my fiction in the past that a new novel’s running and the next chapter’s been published. ❤ Alan Tabor, Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀, Brendabrown, Catherine Caruso, Catherine Durkin Robinson, Chidi Michaels, Christiana White, Deb Clark, Dennis Abrahamson, Esther Spurrill-Jones, Evelyn Jean Pine, Frank Delaurier, Gregory Bell, Hidayatullah, HJ Free4Life, Jackie Sacco, James Finn, Jen Maidenberg, Kenny D, L. A. Jackson, Lilit A. Sargsyan, Maddy Wylie, Matthew John, Mike Behlen, Nicole Higginbotham-Hogue, Nini Mappo, Paul Morriss, Rebecca Ruth Gould, Ripley J. Cloud, R.L. Raymundo, Rolli, Sandra Salamander, Shannon Mary Sims, Skippy von Alte Welt, The Old Grey Wolf, Wendy Allen, Yvonne Vávra
My writing is free to readers who follow my links from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but if you’d like to browse more, click here to join Medium for $5 a month and they’ll give me some of that money. (Yes!) For an email when I publish a new story, click here. Find more of my fiction, including another novel, on this List. And for more of the good stuff, follow Fourth Wave, where we’re changing the world for the better, one story at a time. Got one of your own? Submit to the Wave!
Copyright © 2021 by Patsy Fergusson. All rights reserved.