No number of lists can make someone who is depressed care a whit whether anything is ticked off or not.
At the small hospital yesterday where a radiologist did a needle location procedure on my breast, inserting a long needle with a wire into it, then taking two mammograms, looking at them, and coming back four times to readjust the needle and take two more mammograms (and then, because my head was in the way for one and the technician forgot to put in film for another, re-take two of those eight (?) mammograms----I began to lose count), I finally was wheeled in to have the incisional biopsy done, which at that point, I looked forward to because I felt absolutely traumatized by all that squeezing and needling. Think of it. Just a mammogram is bad enough (especially if your breast is tender, anyway), but with a needle poking out in addition to that? Torture. The only way I could deal with it was to keep focused away from what was happening, to basically give up my body to the two nurses and the doctor who came in and out after studying the location of the needle on the film. His aim was finally perfect, as he showed me the image of the needle just touching the little wire marker that'd been left there from an earlier procedure, and he then injected some blue dye to guide the surgeon's blade. At no time did I dwell on the fact that this is MY BREAST with a needle in it they're looking at. I actually told the doctor that it looked perfect. It all seemed rather absurd.
In the times I've been anaesthetized, I always like to try to anticipate when I'll "go under" before the weird waking up (which seems like moments later) in the recovery room. It never fails that I think it's not going to work, that they'll begin cutting on me and I'll still be awake, but then----I'm gone. All I remembered this time after that initial doubt is my thought (upon being rudly awakened by a nurse calling my name) that I was in a huge blue field.
The dreaded procedure is behind me, so now I'm waiting for the results, which I should know sometime next week.
