Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Boob Squish

Last week I had my second-ever mammogram, or as I like to affectionately call it, the boob squish. I recall my first mammo: two technicians man-handling my breasts, trying to get all the flesh on the table and then pushing a button to press the plates together. It was a comedy of errors and took forever. I attributed the difficulties they had positioning me properly to my small breastal region, but perhaps my technicians were inexperienced, because last week I met Carol.
           
When I walked into the clinic, I chummed it up with the front deskers. I saw them last week for my kidney x-ray, and Oldest Son was in recently for a chest x-ray. We’re on a first-name basis now.
“Here I am again!” I said to Shanyce.
“Don’t worry; you’ve got Carol. She’s great!” I wasn’t worried; I do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu—I’m used to having my personal space invaded. Plus after giving birth to Oldest Son in front of ten doctors and two nurses I’d never seen before (high risk babies in teaching hospitals bring them out of the woodwork, and I was in no shape to complain), I’m not really the shy type. However, it’s still nice to get the “experienced” tech.

Carol called me in. She was a look-alike down to the jewelry for Oldest Son’s third-grade teacher. There’s a lot of touching in a mammo, and I imagine many people are disconcerted by it. I can tell because Carol starts explaining everything she’s going to do as she does it. “You don’t have to say all that,” I say, but she continues and I realize that maybe it helps her.

Carol is good and I am compliant. It only takes a few snapshots to get all the pictures she needs. “Tell me if it’s uncomfortable,” she says, but I don’t, because it’s really not that bad.
            “Wow! That was like, twenty pounds of pressure!” Carol marvels after our last picture, in awe of the force my boob is taking. My thoughts go straight to Monday night, and the side control my 230-pound friend had on me. Ha! Twenty pounds! I thought to myself. She has no idea!

8 comments:

  1. Very well written! I'm tweeting this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, and the results were negative, just in case you were wondering! : )

    ReplyDelete
  3. Glad to hear results were negative. I have never gotten one of those things. Ugh. They sound horrid. Funny you should post about boobs today, because the subject was on my mind as well, recently. Because after rolling last time I realized I had lost one. A boob, that is. She'd gone AWOL! With all the tumbling, choking, pulling, shoving, flipping, flopping, bending and whatnot I had not been paying much attention to keeping things in place. You cannot afford to take the mental luxury, or the physical time, when you are at a size and experience disadvantage, and every second and ounce of pressure counts. We all drifted apart, huffing and puffing in various degrees, with 20 seconds or so left on the clock, it being near the end of the last roll of the night. Time had been creeping up on us. And the stars were out. Someone slammed the clock and we were making idle conversation. We started to wave goodbye and drift out the door one by one. And it wasn't until I was on the street walking to my car that, having exited hallowed ground and re-entered the profane world of unjit, I thought I should rearrange myself maybe. And I automatically moved my hands to the area while glancing down and...I had one boob. Momentary very stupid shock and horror. Because you're in a certain frame of mind when you leave anyway, you know? You're not thinking right, you're replaying the night in your mind, thinking about what you could have done better, the cool toy the visitor brought, the certain way to pull off that kimura and not re-injure that old reinjury, etc. What you aren't thinking is that a body part might disappear. Turns out the left one had escaped its harness (but HOW!?) and was flattened down on my chest UNDER the harness, making it seem as if it had disappeared from the perspective of the top. Glancing around, I tucked the girl back in, wondering how long it had been that way! *toast* to the girls!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. lol...glad you found her! That must have been some roll!

      Delete
  4. My point being, in posting that above, that JJ is like a drug, and you are still high when you leave. Endorphins, whatever the chemical mix is, it creates an altered state of consciousness. For a tiny fraction of a nanosecond, the unjit part of my brain, which had been turned off for a few hours, or locked up somewhere, crawled pathetically out of the place I'd evilly locked it up in - and Unjit Brain thought I had left the boob back in the club. As it turned out, I had left part of a filling and another item, and probably some hair and a bobby pin and god knows what else...but the boob was still attached.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love that feeling. I get it from running, too, but never from another sport. I get great ideas in that space. They never seem to work, but boy are they great ideas!

      Delete
    2. Yes, one tends to get ideas about extending JJ revelations to other areas of life. Hence all the blogs out there using JJ as a touchstone to ponder The World. :D May you always be lump-free!

      Delete

Shark Girl Is Ready to Pull the Plug on Her "New" Gym

I need your jiu jitsu therapy again, o vast and all-knowing readers.  About a year Before Covid (BC), my native gym closed down--the one whe...