Shitty Titty Bang Bang

Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 6:00 am | | 30 Comments | Living authentically Looks great

I decided yesterday that Mboob is NOT my friend, and I’m contemplating severing all ties with her and her counterpart, replacing the pair with shiny new ones who will treat me well.

For those unfamiliar with Mboob, a bit of explanation: Three years ago, a mammogram revealed “something suspicious.” I was referred to a breast specialist — a man, of course — who poked, prodded, and played with my boobies before doing an ultrasound and proclaiming I had nothing to worry about. “It’s a cyst. We’ll just keep watching it.”

So every year, I faithfully keep my appointment to “watch it.”  And every year, I cringe when I walk into the office because someone in that place thinks it’s a good idea to decorate with portraits of  women who have died of breast cancer portrayed as garish angels.

And every year, when I have my mammogram, I think about a cashier in the parking lot of the Atlanta airport whose name, I swear upon my Maidenform, was Mboob.

Mboob was lucky enough to have me in her line a few years ago. And I was dumb enough to repeat the name to my kids, who promptly made 4,336 jokes about it in the next three days.

Jokes like “Have you met Mboob?”

“Have you seen Mboob lately?”

“Mboob has a twin.”

You get the idea. I finally got tired of the Mboob jokes and threatened to stop buying milk if I heard any more milk-comes-from-Mboob jokes.

The moratorium on Mboob lasted two days, until we were in South Florida and passed a sign for Naples. “Mboob wants to go to Nipples!” Lyla shouted.

Two weeks ago, a mammogram revealed that Mboob has moved from cysts to calcifications.  And that meant a biopsy was in order.

I was scheduled for a stereotactic biopsy of my right breast yesterday morning.  After changing into a wraparound gown that had three arm holes (it took me right back to my high school days of wraparound skirts at the Christian school), I was escorted to a room that had a bed with a hole the size of a volleyball in the center of it.

The idea is to lie facedown on the elevated table with the breast hanging through.  A mammogram machine grabs the breast from below and compresses it to pinpoint the exact location of the calcifications.  (I can only imagine what this looks like to the person sitting underneath the table).  Then a “needle” the size of a cattle prod is inserted into the breast to scrape out the calcifications to be biopsied.  A computer chip is left behind so that, if necessary, the area can be quickly located again.

In other words, Mboob was going to be fitted with a Lo-Jack.

Of course, the volleyball-sized hole was extremely generous.  They would have only needed one the size of a tennis ball for Mboob because she is an itty bitty titty. A shitty itty bitty titty, in fact, because as it turns out, she is too tiny for that particular procedure.  The compression of the mammogram would have made Mboob too small for the needle. To put it bluntly, my stereotactic biopsy turned out to be nothing more than a two-hour titty twister.

So Mboob will have to be cut open and biopsied the old-fashioned way.  She started to complain about stitches and scarring.  “Zip it, Mboob,” I said.  “Yes, a 1 ½” scar will pretty much cover most of your surface, but it’s your fault.  Because of you, I will now have to be put to sleep.  And I’m scared to death that while I’m under, I’ll tell the breast specialist exactly what I think about the artwork in his office.”

So I won’t cry if Mboob has to go.  She’s no angel, and I wouldn’t look good painted as one.

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