What’s One More Time?

February 18th, 2007

I slept until well past 12:30 p.m. both days this weekend. I had no idea how ridiculously tired I was until the dog got up for a walk at 8 a.m. and I realized there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to give me the stamina to start my day that early, especially given that I worked until 2 a.m. Saturday morning, and 1 a.m. every other morning during the week, which meant I didn’t go to bed until 3 some nights. And with a 6 or 7 a.m. wake up most days, you could say that I was close to crying for much of the week, and in fact, I cried the whole way to my 7 a.m. mammogram on Wednesday morning, snuffling and whispering to myself, “I’m just…so…tired…” and oh, I was.

Speaking of mammograms, I walked out of the office before I even got to jam my boob into the slide. In fact, you could say that I stormed off, after Lydia, the nurse who was “taking care” of me, yelled at me no fewer than three times before I even showed anyone a single boob.

I have fibrocystic breasts, and said as much in the form in the “potential problems or things we should know” section, right next to the weird illustration of the boob where you have to identify any honking moles on your breasts. Incidentally, I am sorry to report that I couldn’t help but notice that the woman next to me was making some sort of connect the dots project with hers, which led me to imagine what on EARTH her breasts must look like. This creeped me out on many levels, not the least of which was the intense concentration I was devoting to the horrid, embarrassing effort of visualizing another woman’s boobs in detail. Hence, I experienced what a man goes through every day, if only for five minutes. But seriously, the dots! The large, colored-in portions! The surreptitious peeks beneath her sweater to figure out the location of the MANY MANY MOLES! You’d have to be dead not to notice it.

Ahem. Anyway, I guess fibrocystic breasts weren’t worth mentioning, because when Lydia saw it, she screeched, “Oh my GOD. That’s not a problem. That’s not A PROBLEM OR SOMETHING WE SHOULD KNOW. That’s GLANNULAR. That’s a GLANNULAR problem. This is ridiculous. Sit down. I have to go re-do all of your paperwork. My God.”

Glannular. I’m assuming she meant “glandular” but even so, seriously? That’s part of why I was having the mammogram, according to my ob-gyn. I sat stewing in my little holding cell wearing a paper robe and dreaming about popping Lydia’s head off for….45 minutes. She left me there for 45 minutes in a freezing cell while multiple male patients (MEN!) walked in and out for ultrasounds, eyeing me in my sad little see-through robe, and when she finally returned, I asked her how much longer I would be there (I had an appointment at 9:30). She took this as an opportunity to lecture me on my tardiness (even though I was there 10 minutes early), and about the necessity to allow ample time for an exam (two and a half hours for a mammogram? I don’t think so, Lydia). Also, maybe I should take my health more seriously and learn how to fill out forms properly. And that’s when I stood up, put my clothes back on, and I think I actually said:

“Stop talking. Give me my prescription back. Now.”

I walked out, leaving Lydia with a shitload of forms and a very angry disposition. And then I got in my car and cried, because I was just…so…tired…and I wasted an hour of sleep sitting in a waiting room getting yelled at by a woman with a hairy mole and watching another woman draw up a detailed diagram of her breasts that may or may not have involved Orion’s belt around her left nipple.

And really, that about sums up my week, which was fraught with actual work (not so fun, which is really sad, because it used to be fun, and please, God, let them bring the magic back) and freelance work (actually fun), and working on getting more freelance work (tiring, but…sort of fun) and then finally, some kind of weird stomach flu* that made it impossible for me to be more than three feet from a bathroom without wondering if shit was going to go down, and I’m sorry to say, I mean that in the literal sense.

However, this was not before I had more dental work done and had a soldering electrode dropped on my face, which I promptly threw back at the dentist, screeching, “YOU ARE GOING TO SOLDER MY LIPS OFF!” and got tears in my eyes, to their endless amusement, because apparently electrodes require three pedals to be on, and don’t stay hot when not in use. But still. An overtired stresscase doesn’t need a soldering gun to be dropped on her lips, but I’m not sure crying was really necessary.

The upside is that I had a skin tag on my arm that miraculously fell off. You know it’s been a rough go of it when you can point to a skin tag as the highlight of your week. In summary: tears, boobs, work, the stomach flu, a soldering gun and happily: skin tags! This week just has to be better, doesn’t it?

*Incidentally, my best guess is that the stomach flu was from the peanut butter issue, because guess who had two PB&Js with jars from the tainted lot the day before? But who honestly knows, and more importantly, who cares? As Lawyerish put it, I could join in a class-action suit and get my $2 and free Peter Pan.

**Lori McKenna

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