The mammogram callback blues

An ode to dense titty sandwiches

Photo credit: Charlie Bielanko

Days that move like syrup. Heat tired. Work tired. Like a neverending vacation hangover, I can’t get into a productive groove of any kind this summer.

I pour my lethargic body into the minivan to drive to a mammogram appointment I was supposed to make in May but kept forgetting. Or subconsciously putting off and labeling it as forgetting?

Like anyone, I dread flopping my 46-year-old titty onto the cliff of the mammogram machine so the mammographer can make titty sandwiches out of me and the machine while checking for the cancer I am certain is imminent while I nervously make bad boob jokes like a 17-year-old aspiring stand-up comic.

Boobs, amirite? wah wah wah

On the short drive to the appointment, as I always do, I play out the worst-case scenario in my head: The Diagnosis. I will be stoic when I receive the news. Cory, who has had cancer and who will be with me when it happens, will marvel at my bravery. I will nod my head slowly in stolid un-surprise and calmly ask the doctor about next steps. Cory will cry and I will courageously comfort him.

God, I’m so full of shit. How does Cory put up with me?

Like my hair going gray or the furrow between my eyebrows deepening into full-blown resting bitch face, I’ve always assumed a bout with cancer was on my middle-age horizon. Breast cancer specifically seems inevitable these days. Everyone knows three, four, half a dozen women who have been diagnosed. And we’ve all known women who didn’t make it. Moms, aunts, sisters, friends, and strangers. I have worm-holed the Instagram pages of many gutsy women with a feeling not unlike rubbernecking a horrendous freeway crash. Beautiful, brave women who chronicled years of valiantly fighting to survive until a final post from a loved one indicates their war is over.