Quickly, I got a diagnostic mammogram done and within half an hour they were also doing an ultrasound. What they saw on the mammogram was indistinguishable so they went right to the ultrasound. An ultrasound is the best way to tell if it is a cyst or not. It wasn't a cyst. Next step was to do an ultrasound guided biopsy which was scheduled for a week later. I arrived as planned, got gowned up, and was sitting on the ultrasound table as the radiologist asked me if I had taken any aspirin that day.

"No," I said, "but I do take warfarin." It's the generic version of Coumadin which is a blood thinner.

"Whoops, I think we have a problem," she said then excused herself to go ask someone else. Bottom line, no they couldn't do the test that day. We even asked the doctor that was going to perform the biopsy and initially she thought about doing it but after going to ask someone else herself she said no, we couldn't do it. So, I had to go home and not take the warfarin for the next five days. None of us were sure who was supposed to tell me to stop taking warfarin but I suspect my regular doctor should have been the one. Amy and I both don't think she is as thorough as she ought to be. Amy has switched doctors. I keep thinking about it.

Five days later (today), I was back to get the biopsy done. It was definitely going to happen this time and I started reacting to that fact as soon as I sat down in the waiting room. I had been calm about it until then. Try as hard as I might to push the growing panic aside, I couldn't. I was experiencing a mild anxiety attack. My chest felt heavy and I felt kinda shaky. As soon as I got into the ultrasound room, again gowned up, the tears started squirting out the sides of my eyes. They weren't streaming heavy, just off and on drops that welled up. Everyone noticed--the radiologist, the student assistant and the doctor--and kept patting my shoulder and reassuring me that it was going to be alright. I knew it was but there was an old tape playing inside my head from the other time I had to get a biopsy done.

That was seven years ago while I was living in Jackson, Ohio. It was the right breast that time. I had to lie on my stomach and hang my boob through a hole in the table. I felt overwhelmingly vulnerable and exposed. All was going fine until the second sample was being taken and I felt a burning pain inside my breast. Immediately, I said, "Oooo, that hurts" and broke out into a cold sweat nearly close to fainting. The nurses and doctor reacted right away and stopped what they were doing except to get more numbing fluid into my breast. It seemed that my cold sweat went on for a long time and that the rest of the procedure took forever. But it was over in due time without any more pain. But the cold sweat left me shaken. And didn't leave my mind. So, my apprehension and mild anxiety attack were because of that unnerving experience.

This time it all went fine as I knew in actuality it would. The numbing needle was a very tiny pinprick that wasn't bad at all. She took four or five samples and I watched them all on the ultrasound. And then it was over. I came right home and felt exhausted so I spent the next several hours watching a movie or two. I knew that would help revitalize me. And it did. Enough so, so that I went to the grocery store for a couple of hours. It was while I was at the store that this whole thing began to overwhelm me. I had the desire to go somewhere and lay my head down and cry but I didn't. Being out and doing ordinary things seemed so contradictory to the trauma that had been so suddenly thrust upon me. I couldn't stop thinking about all the cancer movies I had watched over the years until I just couldn't absorb one more and stopped watching them. It seemed to me that they were all so melodramatic compared to the reality of what I was feeling--mostly calm and accepting. Life just goes on, you know. You get cancer, you cut it out. Trouble is, it has the potential to grow back. I guess that's the big heartwrenching point to all those movies. Once you get cancer, you are always in fear of cancer.