To celebrate, I went and got a mammogram. I know, not the sort of thing you'd normally think of doing when you are celebrating the sunshine, the long weekend, and the posting of Chapter 3. But mammo was on my calendar, and I was celebrating, so I showed up with a smile at the breast center. I arrived 20 minutes early for my appointment, so I sat in the main waiting area, ready to settle in for a spell, but within three minutes, I heard someone call my name. What a great place!
“Wow,” I said.
“Take the key with you,” she reminded me cheerily as she exited.
I unfolded the gown. Nothing flimsy about that gown. Heavy cotton, full-length, a lovely solid dark green teal. You could call it a kimono; it was like something I would wear around the Love Shack on a warm day. It looked somewhat like the robes I used to make for an old producer guy when I made custom clothes in Los Angeles. Nothing remotely hospital gowny about it. I quickly divested myself of my shirt and tanktop and wrapped the robe around me. Mmmmm, nice. I stowed my gear and slipped the key ring coil over my wrist like a bracelet. Too cool! Feeling quite stylish, I went out into the waiting area.
Chairs were arranged in a rectangle around a coffee table laden with every women's magazine you could imagine. Oprah, Martha Stewart, Vogue, Good Housekeeping. One woman waited, paging through a magazine. She was an older gal, wearing a black head of hair that I suspected was a wig. I didn't look closely, but I got the impression she was a solidly built gal, well-endowed. I wondered if I would hear screams from her exam room.
I pawed a few magazines, found a copy of Oprah. “This is from December 2011,” I mused under my breath. I tried to do quick math in my head, and failed. How old? I don't know, old.
I picked up another one. “This one is from August of last year. That's not so bad.”
“People probably donate them,” the woman said politely, intent on her own magazine.
I looked at a few ads. “It's great when people donate magazines,” I said.
Suddenly she looked up, and I looked up, and we connected, two women, one light-skinned, one dark-skinned, both wearing teal cotton kimonos in an x-ray waiting room.
“I keep hoping Martha Stewart will have a cake dish,” she confided. “My cousin had one, a real tall one, like this tall—” She held her hands about a yard apart. I was about to tell her about my aunt's collection of antique cake dishes, but we were interrupted by the technician calling her name. Her name was Chatauqua. So off she went, this teal-clad woman with the unlikely name of Chatauqua to get her boobs smashed, and that is the last I saw of her. She and the technician were chatting about cake dishes when my own name was called.
Lisa led me through more hallways to a dimly lit exam room, smiling beatifically. I was smiling too. I knew what was coming. No worries. Now that I'm post-you-know-what, I don't mind mammograms. My flacid fleshy protuberances, formerly known as funbags, aren't protruding much anymore. (Nor are they much fun, for me or anyone else.) So I didn't mind when Lisa grabbed my breast and manipulated it into place, cranking the machine to smash my flesh between two glass panes, saying, “Hold it right there, just like that, and don't breathe!” Piece of cake. I cared more about the breathing than I did about the mashing. Left, right, front, side, four times in the press, and I was done.
“There's some coffee or tea over there for you, if you'd like,” Lisa said graciously. “And deodorant.” (Oh, do I stink? You told me no powder or pitstop!) I quickly retrieved my clothes, tossed the teal green kimono gown in the hamper, and cruised out the door. Start to finish, it was over in 15 minutes. It took longer to park my car than it did to get mashed, pressed, and x-rayed. I was singing the lab's praises to myself as I hustled through the corridors of the cancer center. (Huh? Art on the walls, amateurish oil paintings of flowers for what!? $600? Yipes!)
As I was wondering if I should start painting again, it occurred to me that I would have made a good mystery shopper for that x-ray lab. Maybe the HMO needs a little undercover secret shopping to find out how they are doing? Hmmmm. Something to consider. I'm all about service quality. I'm naturally judgmental; it's the perfect job fit for me.
The next item on my healthcare bucket list is the colonoscopy. Ugh. I don't think I'm up for that just yet. Maybe in a few years. Growing old sucks. When growing old is finally considered de rigeur, then I'll get a colonoscopy. Then I'll join AARP. Then I'll give up rock n roll and start listening to pale jazz or whatever they call it. Until then, forget it. I'll stick with mammograms, thanks. Retirement is for babies, anyway, right? What do they say about riding it hard all the way to the end of the line?
I probably won't be riding anything hard any time soon, but I don't expect to be retiring anytime ever. My retirement plan is die. I guess if the White House changes hands, that will happen sooner rather than later, but whatever. Everyone dies. And the beat goes on.
