Sleepy Girl in Kansas City Gets a Mammogram

It's the middle of the night and I've been up watching TV and eating. I can't sleep anymore. It's gotten so bad that I don't know what to do. Ok, I know what to do - go see a doctor. You know what the doctor will do though, right? He'll give me more drugs to help me sleep. Oh, I think I'm on enough different medications and I don't need any more. Besides, most of the sleep aids make me sluggish the next day. I am to the point now where I envy people who can crawl in bed and fall asleep all on their own.

I know the title of my blog is Nothing To Worry About, but I spend a great deal of time worrying. About everything. There is a good chance this is what's keeping me awake at night. How do people shut off their mind and just fall asleep? This insomnia is killing me. I want one night that I go to sleep and I don't wake up again until morning.

Anyway, since I can't sleep I thought it was time I updated this (and I plan to keep it updated from here on out. We'll see how that goes.) On the cancer front: I am seeing my oncologist every three months now and so far all has gone well. I do have a lump in my right breast that they are keeping an eye on, but two mammograms have shown that it isn't growing, so they don't believe it's anything serious. They will continue to give me a mammogram every 6 months though, just in case.

Story time! This involves my last mammogram:

My oncologist makes all these appointments for me way far in advance - like three months! And I always mean to program those dates into my phone (cause you see I have one of those nifty iPhones that can do everything except drive a car.) The phone is unable to notify you if you always forget to add your appointments into the calendar. Because of this major phone malfunction, I miss a lot of appointments. Stupid phone. So I missed my scheduled mammogram and I needed to have one done before seeing Dr Young a few weeks ago. With a lot of begging and pleading, I was able to get a last minute appointment.

When I arrived, I ended up getting the same mammogram technician who did my very first mammogram. Talk about your major flashbacks! She didn't remember me. I tried to remind her who I was, too. I explained how I was there almost two years ago and she put my boobs in this machine and squeezed them - and yet not a spark of recognition from her.

We did get talking about all that I had gone through the last couple of years. Of course, she noticed the scars on my breasts and told me, as everyone who sees them tells me, that they look fantastic. I tell her thank you and said I was sure she had lovely breasts also - because, you know, I'm polite like that. It's at this point that she tells me that the sonogram giver tech girl (that is her official title) also had breast cancer and a double mastectomy. She had the same reconstruction surgery as me, too. That was kind of neat. I have never met anyone in real life who had the same surgery as me.

After getting my boobs squeezed in the machine, I had to wait while the radiologist reviewed the films to make sure I didn't need a do-over. As I was waiting, they brought over sonogram giver tech girl and we started talking about all we went through. She didn't have the same plastic surgeon as I, but hers was out of the same office. She asked me how many surgeries I had to have to get my breasts looking so nice and I told her I only had the one. She was a bit taken back. Seems sonogram giver tech girl had already had three surgeries and was waiting for her 4th.

Of course I tried to be subtle and gazed at the area where her breasts were. Oh my! I think that's what I thought. Her breasts were closer to under her arms instead the in front of her chest and seemed lower than they should have been. She busted me looking and told me that the next surgery was going to be getting the breasts more centered.

She was just another reminder of how blessed I am. I had one surgery; got great breasts and I'm done. I didn't give it much thought, but I guess I figured that's how it went for everyone. Silly me. I, of all people, should know that if it can go wrong...it will.

Almost two years ago I started this blog. It feels like that was forever ago. I'm back to almost 100%. I want to thank everyone for all their prayers and help as I went through this. And I'll wrap this up by reminding everyone that it's the end of October - which means it's the end of breast cancer awareness month. If you haven't already... GET A MAMMOGRAM!