I am at the doctor’s office filling out the standard paperwork.  It’s been a year since my last mammogram.  I scan the list of every horrendous ailment. “No,” I check to burning, itching, psychiatric disorders. “No” to cancer, diabetes, heart disease and enlarged prostate. I pause, however, at the question:  “Any changes to your breasts?”

“Yes,” I write.  “Apparently someone let the air out of them, and they don’t get enough attention.”

“Vision?”  “Stolen around the same time my breasts were deflated.”

“Mouth or oral changes?”  “Shit, yes, I swear like a sailor and I can store enough food in my recessed gums to open a food bank.”

The doctor swaggers in. He is an alarmingly handsome newbie, not the overweight-bespectacled female physician I am accustomed to seeing.  I scramble to erase my comment about my under-attended-to-deflated breasts, but the eraser’s gone flat and only smudges the page.

“Let’s see here,” he says taking my clipboard.  “Dr. Katz is on leave and I’ve come into the practice. I’m Dr….”

“Hottie-good-looking?” I blurt out.  “I’m sorry, it’s the CCMMS” I say.

 “What?” He blushes.

I direct him to the last line of my paperwork hoping he’ll pass over the breast remark. Reason For Visit: Can’t Control My Mouth Syndrome (CCMMS).

 “Heh heh,” he chuckles.

 “No, seriously, I can’t control my mouth.”

“Mrs. Tanzman?  Mrs. Tanzman?”

A tech assistant has come through the door and I am snapped back to reality.  I am not sitting in Dr. Hottie’s office, but in fact, in the waiting room at the Long Beach Memorial Breast Center cloaked in what only could be called a peek-a boob robe. The gown, if one is lucky, ties in the front at the neck and not again until the thigh.  This is meant to dupe one into thinking if both strings were tied one would not be flashing one’s boobs to every passerby (which one does).

I didn’t get a lucky robe. I am held together with one set of strings and one pair of hands.

“Come this way.” says Rita the tech. “We need to get more films.”

I was here last week for my annual mammogram and the center called two days later.

 “Mrs. Tanzman, this is the Long Beach Memorial Breast Center.”

“I guess you’re not calling to say I’ve won a fruit basket?”

“Uh no, we found a little spot that we’d like to magnify and get an ultrasound on.”

So here I go off to sandwich these semi-deflated breasts in the machine I’m sure has the potential to catapult my nipple across the room. After about eight more films we head to the ultrasound suite where the slightly overweight, bespectacled female physician finally meets me.

How pathetic am I that have fabricated this whole Dr. Hottie thing in order to cope with what is now being called a “mass” in my right breast? Upon hearing the word “mass” I feel the urge to run to the nearest pew and drop to my knees.

“You think it’s that ominous word ‘mass,’ I blurt out, “or a just a Catholic-free-association-thing that’s got me feeling like I should start praying?” This CCMMS moment goes completely unnoticed because the doctor is busy squishing gel and running her ultrasound wand over me like those beachcomber guys zig-zagging the sand with their metal detectors. “There it is!” she exclaims as if she’s found the mother lode.

 “I’d like to do a needle biopsy if you’re up for it? We’ll insert a tiny metal BB to tag the tissue. Don’t worry, it won’t set off any airport alarms.”

I consent to the procedure before I see the tool she will use. The tech unveils what appears to be a hybrid between an electric toothbrush and a spear gun. It whrrs whrrs whrrs and then pops with a single staccato when the hollow needle spears into the tissue.  
“You will numb me? I ask rhetorically. The vibrato in her “Oooh yes” suggests a little deep breathing would be a good idea.

 “You’ll feel a little stick,” she says as she injects the Lidocaine needle or at least tries to.

 “This is so tough,” she huffs, hoisting her knee on the table while thrusting herself full force against my 98-lb frame. I am relieved and surprised that I feel absolutely no pain not even a stick, but the sight of this woman practically mounting me makes me long for Dr. Hottie.

“All right, are you ready for the biopsy now?” she asks.

“Whrr away,” I answer.  “Just don’t say oops.”

For the next several days I wait with the borrowed grace observed in the faces of the other women who sat with me in the waiting room.  Between the mental meanderings of Dr. Hottie I had actually listened to the other women.  Some had been through multiple rounds of chemo and radiation. Others had breasts removed. They talked about their trials so matter-of-factly it was unnerving. It wasn’t their courage so much, but their acceptance of what was, that gave them such power and I repeat, such grace. I say that I borrowed grace because clearly, I was a neophyte. But each day of my waiting I awoke and stood naked in front of the mirror and said,   
   
“Thank You, God, for this wonderful body that has served me so well.” I also apologized for all the criticisms and verbal lashings I’d flung about for so many years. All the really mean “I hates” about my body. I concentrated on the what IS’s not the what if’s.

And something funny happened. I began to notice things around me as if everything had a Fresnel lens with micro-arcsecond-angular resolution bringing the universe into exquisite focus.  Everything was magnified: colors, sounds, smells?as if the elements had suddenly been injected with a mega dose of steroids.  And then the call came.

 “It’s a fibroadenoma.”

I panic for a moment because although I am not fluent in Latin, I know my way around the “oma” suffix. It means tumor. The doctor goes on to explain the good news.

 “These tough fibrous tumors are benign. It’s odd,” she says with a long pause, “Tumors like these are usually found in young breasts.”

I decide to take this as a compliment.

“Ha, Ha , tricked that tumor,” I say. “It found itself a 53-year-old cougar-host instead of some young cubby.” My comment is patently ignored.

 “No further treatment is necessary, just continue to come in for your regular mammograms.”

 “Thanks,” I say. “No, really, thank you.”

So there I stood at the edge of the proverbial cliff and my flight lesson was canceled or at least suspended. I was not forced to leap or fly like those other women. I was given a lesson in grace and gratitude and a tiny little metal BB that will forever reside in my right breast. It’s the tag and release program. Proof positive, at least to any radiologist, that I am tough but benign. Now if only I could get my mouth under control.