If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve had at least one pair of underwear that fit wrong – so wrong it ruined your whole day. Tuesday was that day and today – my day off – the mission is to weed them ALL out so they can meet their destiny in the landfill. They affect the way your pants fit, the way you sit, the way you walk – and I assure you that the left leg… forward-arial-half-turn every alternate step was not addressing the problem.

I hate underwear shopping. I buy what appears to be my size and then it’s all but a roulette until I’ve walked in them. Bras are bit easier in that you know right away. Nevertheless, bra shopping in itself is a torture no woman over forty should have to endure. Victoria’s Secret was very very good to me in the 1990s, when boobs were boobs and not some blob of transforming flesh that seems intent to cavort with gravity every day.

Speaking of boobs, one boob is behaving badly. The joy of aging is full of twists and turns that are alternately fun and funny, and depressing and occasionally sad. That whole – comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel – thing. In an effort to keep things light today, I will side with comedy.

My right boob failed the mammo. I was referred to a breast specialist named – wait for it – Dr. Weiner. Fine doctor but my 6^th grade sense of humor cannot overlook this. (Perhaps I should have saved this joke until after he takes a scalpel to my boob.)

Anyway, we attempted an in-office stereotactic breast biopsy. Here’s an illustration. Unfortunately, this procedure could not be performed because… bad boob. But not before an incision had been made and then they wrapped me up in an ace bandage and told me I’d need to be scheduled for a surgical biopsy. Fast forward almost two weeks, the steri-strips fell off and there’s a stitch or two under them that needed to be taken out, that no one in the office thought to address with me. So this leads me to…

Asking one of the medical assistants at work to take them out for me. I said, we about to get to know each other a LOT better today. And then we had to invite the lead nurse in too because the TWO stitches Dr. Weiner put in were “really tight.” So there’s me and two women I work with – albeit medical professionals – me clutching and holding up my naked boob flesh with the two of them staring at the stitches just inches below me – unable to get the scissors under the thread and then had to get a scalpel to do the job and all I’m thinking is, I have boob sweat now. I thanked them and apologized profusely for making them do this and, we will never speak of this.

I’m scheduled for surgery next week. But first – I got a tracker! Well, it’s called a SAVI SCOUT but I call it a tracker and if you have the right device handy it will beep. Yesterday, a mammography-guided needle implanted this rice-sized thing in the area to be biopsied so that when I go in, Dr. Weiner will know exactly where the site is. When he uses his little wand thingy, it will beep when it locates the SCOUT (knock it off, you perverts). 

You may be surprised how many people it takes to implant a SAVI SCOUT. It takes six. The patient, the radiologist, his technician, two more technicians to position the boob, me, the chair, and the compression plates, and one more who is “observing.” The radiologist said, while I sat with my boob smashed between two plates, “don’t go anywhere,” and I realized I was with my people. Wonderful staff, all of them. Totally worth the hour+ drive to the hospital that delivered my children.

No stitches this time but a small round bandaid to cover the “knick” he made to insert the needle, and … the piece de resistance… the black Sharpied X on the location of the SCOUT. And they gave me the Sharpie – the Mercedes of Sharpies if ever there was one because it is way nicer than any Sharpie I ever had – to go over the X after I shower to keep it from fading. It is not where I thought it would be and I’ll try not to think about that right now.

This is where the Scooby Doo bandaid comes in. So I went to work in the afternoon and it suddenly occurred to me that I was wearing a WHITE BRA and there is BLACK Sharpie on my boob. My coworker – because we have no secrets here – suggested I cover it. With a bandaid. Alas, we are a PEDIATRIC office and so there is no such thing as a plain bandaid. So… I returned home to my husband at the end of the day with a Scooby Doo bandaid where X marks the spot and my sense of humor intact.

I don’t know where all this will go but I am taking one day at a time and planning my reading and resting days accordingly. Is it wrong to look forward to this for needed downtime? Dr. Weiner said there will be a scar and I resisted my dark urge to tell him it was okay, I’m not stripping anymore. Not everybody gets me, I know.

I promise to post an update because I’m committed to oversharing and I promise not to joke about implants this time. Beep! Beep!

*This post brought to you by The Ministry of Silly Walks and Scooby Doo. Special thanks to Shakespeare and TEK Gear compression sports bras.

Miscellaneous Breast Quotes

Where breasts say, Come and play, the bust, like the snub nose of a bumper car, says, Out of my way! ~ I Don’t Know How She Does It, Allison Pearson

“Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun. You don’t stare at it. It’s too risky. Ya get a sense of it and then you look away.” ~ Jerry Seinfeld

The key is boobs. If he is sad, show him the boobs. Happy – show the boobs. Angry – boobs again. Boobs are magic. ~ unknown

According to my nipples, summer is over. ~ unknown