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So there it is.

Was, I mean.

There it was on the screen, and the sweet tech, Hanna (love that it was a Biblical name), had a worried look. I stared at her while she was doing her job: breast ultrasound of my right breast. When I couldn't take it any longer, I asked, "It's pretty bad isn't it?" She nodded. She said something about vascular activity, and "We don't like to see that." I asked what that meant. "It's being fed." Hanna flipped the screen toward me. I said, "Those red and blue dots?" She nodded. She said more things but I was not really listening any more. I was pretty calm, and patting myself on the back for not screaming and overturning medical thingamabobs and running down the hall in the crappy, threadbare gown. Shouldn't I be doing that?

She finally finished up, and said I could take a seat over there while she sent the scans to the BDC (Breast Diagnostic Center) for a radiologist to read. She said this could be a while, maybe 20 minutes. I sat, and went back to my current Kindle book, Theology and Sanity. Oh, I mentioned the book to Hanna (I think I was thinking this is my chance to evangelize), and she asked if it was Biblical theology. I wasn't sure what she meant, but was pretty sure she was trying to evangelize me. I think I muttered, something like "Oh, yeah, of course. It's a really good book." So much for my chance.

She came back in a lot faster than she had said. She said she had a doctor on the phone and would I talk to him. Yep. Here we go. Doctor said biopsy is needed, and repeated Hanna's, "We don't like to see that."

This was 19 days after I found the lump. Nineteen. That used to sound like just "a couple weeks." Now it sounds like forever. Today is day 34.




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