I had shown only a little restraint in not searching every corner of the Internet for information about fine needle aspirations and core needle biopsies of the breast – the latter sounding more ominous – before I showed up at Scottsdale Healthcare yesterday afternoon for a core needle biopsy. Once again supine in a small room illuminated only by images on an ultrasound monitor and the kindness of two technicians, I was out of sync and discombobulated by the not knowing what was in store for me. More in denial than fear, I went by myself, choosing to keep things light for my husband and for my best friend, relegating it to the level of an annual teeth cleaning or a pap smear.

In no uncertain terms, I told the technicians I did not want to be talked through the procedure. I just wanted it to be over. But when they veered from the script I had prepared in my head with the doctor announcing they would be doing three biopsies, panic rose the way it does when the pilot announces turbulence up ahead. “Three?” Nobody had said anything about a third; I had barely begun to accept the existence of a second. Again, “Three?” Were they sure? How could there possibly be three tumors in a breast that had passed four mammograms? Yes, they were sure. The other doctor had ordered three biopsies. I had no choice but to settle in, soon to be transfixed by the images swirling on the monitor. Relatively painless except when I allowed myself to consider the length of the hollow needle piercing my skin and making its way through three benign or cancerous somethings, and extracting tissue, it was the stuff of The Learning Channel.

Had I known what they were doing by the time they got to the third tumor under my right arm, I like to think I would have protested the metal marker being placed deep within my breast tissue, in the shape of the ribbon synonymous with the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the search for a cure. I have grown to despise that ribbon. I have grown to despise doing things on the count of three.  “Relax. One. A little poke. Two. Lidocaine going in. Three.” Then a sound like a staple gun. “You’re doing great.” Three times, I did great. I did really great on the third one, an awkwardly positioned tumor under my right arm. I didn’t realize just how awkward until the surprise mammogram, an undignified and ungainly dance with a cheery technician charged with compressing my small punctured breast between the two plates in such a manner that the surgeon would be able to see the new metal marker. Surgeon. Surgeon? Nobody had said anything about surgery. Or had they?  After much repositioning and squeezing and retaking of pictures, a Wizard of Oz  in another room was satisfied with the X-ray.

Beaming, the technician presented what had been declared a satisfactory mammogram picture of my breast. There it was. Right there on the bottom right of the screen, I saw the metal tissue marker fashioned in the shape of the breast cancer awareness ribbon.

“See? There’s that cute little ribbon.”

Yes. I can see it. 

Branded.

Feeling violated, I waited in another waiting room, thoughts of Susan G. Komen, the young woman who was only 36 years old when metastatic breast cancer killed her, and the organization subsequently established by her sister, gnawing at me. Until that tiny metal ribbon was placed in the tissue of my right breast, I suppose I had regarded Komen et al with a mixture of indifference and denial, blithely handing over an extra dollar at the store to go towards “the cure.” I had always thought – stupidly and selfishly – that breast cancer is the thing that happens to other people, to celebrities who grace the pages of magazines, to women who don’t show up for their mammograms. It does not happen to me. Oh, what a fool I have been – duped and manipulated by its mythology.

I was unaware of the tiny patch of red seeping from the biopsy site through to the front of a thin hospital-issued blue and white striped gown. I had not anticipated blood or ice-packs or the surprise mammogram, but in the realm of breast cancer, the surprises keep coming.  Exposed and vulnerable, an icepack atop my bruised and bleeding breast, I was taken aback when a  young woman, dressed in a gown like mine, put her hand on my shoulder and, whispering, asked  if “they” had poked me. Wordless, I wasn’t sure what they had done. No matter. She assured me I would be in her prayers.

It is a strange sisterhood, where an instantaneous intimacy allows us to talk about being poked and staged and prayed for. It made me uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable had I been left out by language. Language is everything. This I know. And, maybe it can be attributed to  my immigrant spirit, but I know I need to learn the lexicon, the rules, the norms for breast cancer patients gathered together in waiting rooms. And, I will have to learn quickly even though they way  I am well past the best age for learning a second language, I do not want to be immersed in this new culture.

I have other things to do. Christmas is coming. 

The pathology report will come back tomorrow, on November 11th, Veteran’s Day, a day for remembrance. The Breast Care Patient Navigator, a new one, just called to tell me I really should bring someone with me. Do I have a husband? Oh, good. I should bring him along.

She will see us both at 11AM – on 11.11.11 –  a day hailed by numerologists as the luckiest of the century.  One of us will listen; the other will wait to hear the only words worth hearing with Christmas around the corner.

Benign. Benign. Benign.