What's All the Fuss About?

Have you ever seen that episode of Sex and the City when Kim Catrall goes to have an HIV test and she faints when they call her name because she is convinced, after sleeping with half of NYC, that she might have contracted the disease? And all they wanted to tell her was that she is healthy but she should use condoms?

Just say you have an we can move on.

So I get up today and steel myself for this mammogram, wondering what it'll be like, if the machine is as cold as they say it is, if it is brutally uncomfortable (like they say it is). Then I realize that this test won't be done in seclusion, there will be other women there and some of them will bear the mark of being a cancer victim. That made me a little nervous.

I arrive at 10:07 and everyone looks healthy. I see nothing to make me nervous about the remote possibility of a potential problem.

I sign in and they tell me "Gee, we didn't know you were even coming!" Fan-frigging-tastic.

I sign a waiver stating that I understand the wait could be hours (or as little as 30 minutes). But they aren't that busy and so I am called pretty quickly. They bring me to a little changing room and give me a spa robe. Then I join all the other women in another room.

There we are, all waiting to have our tests done. Me, for my baby-step baseline and other women there for their 40 year or annual photo op all dressed in a pretty ridiculous uniform: spa robe, pants and shoes with our purses at our sides.

One woman is older, and after she goes to have her mammogram done, she comes back and waits. Two more women go in and have their mammograms done. Then the first woman is called back out. "We need to take more views," I overheard the clinician tell her. She agrees and comes back to the waiting room. Then I am called and I have the friendliest technician in the world. We chat about Brooklyn, kids, etc. She puts me so at ease I feel I will miss talking to her when the test ends.

I go back to the waiting room. While I am waiting, a second woman is called back for more views.

Then I get nervous. It isn't the test, it's everything after the test to be nervous about. It's the "more views" comment, something could be amiss. The what-if's and waiting for answers, any hint of the unknown a 1,000 pound weight to carry around.

And then they call my name and as I am walking to the door expecting them to want to take more views because there is something suspicious on the films, I don't faint like Kim Catrall, but I don't see the door either and I end up walking right into it.

Then the lady in the pink shirt smiles and asks if I am OK. I tell her I'm fine, waiting for the dreaded words when says "Everything is fine. See you in five years!"

I'm off for a pedicure to celebrate. I will get pink, natch.