Mammogram Morning

Mammogram morning...crack 'o' dawn rush hour, get The Mer to school, then back across town in under half an hour.

I'm crazy with fear and snapping at everything. Shoving a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in front of Al's face as I ran up the stairs to cry...again. I can't let myself think the worst, but of course that's all I'm thinking.

It's taken me five months to get this fucking mammogram. Five months of Medicaid bullshit, and now the time is here, it's finally going to happen.

I arrived early, so as to have ample time to sit in a waiting room and worry. Always helps to be prepared. I was alone, as I am whenever Al isn't with me. A condition I've decided it might be time to rectify. I've done the sacrificial mother dance long enough. Would it be, that this were the last Halloween my child wanted me to Trick or Treat with him? What will I do with all those  lonely Halloweens in the future?

Waaaaahhhaaaaa. Snnerf, gulp. snerf.

Sweet Step mother of Gawd I need hormones!

The "Project Women" program allows you to choose any facility you want to receive care at. I chose the best (in my opinion) medical complex in the city, as opposed to the crappy teaching facility I'm used to (hence five month long wait)

It's tragic, but true, that poor people die sooner then wealthy. Mer-boy has excellent medical care because he's a child with disabilities. How optimum is that care, if his caregiver doesn't receive the same?

I braced myself, as I have for the  last FIVE MONTHS, for the worst...not that I'm all to fond of my breasts. They rather annoy me to be honest. Something of a nuisance if you ask me, always falling out of my bra, there just not what they used to be, they let me dooowwn.

 

Ok, so this is the mother fucker right here, and I'm not going to sugarcoat it one damn bit...it hurt like hades!

There absolutely MUST be another way to do this procedure. Jesus H. Christ man. Makes no sense to me at ALL.

If it weren't for the blue-eyed eight-year-old, riding his big wheel over my toe, slammin the back gate as he yells "Mom, can I go over to Katie's?", blaming everything on Satan the cat, refusing to wear any shirt other than his orange Old Navy  baseball T six days in a row, hangin his arms around my neck as I tuck him in...already working out his list to Santa, "Losing" his spelling list between the classroom and the car, over "Prepared"...if it weren't for this child I would not be on my knees now nightly, desperate for  answers, desperate for angels, knowing in my heart they are with me now, but unable to reach past the fear...

My Mammogram was normal, the lump, breast tissue.

The worst fears are the ones that never come to pass, the ones we create all on our own.

For all the women who's were NOT normal, for the woman next to me in the waiting room, the mother, sister, daughter...things must change in this country.

The statistics are frightening. European women are not dying at such a rate as American women, from Breast, Cervical, Uterine, and Ovarian Carcinoma's. Why? Why do you think this is happening in the United States? What is happening to us as American women, that we are obese, diabetic, nicotine dependent, alcoholic mothers?

Why are we so unhappy? What can we do together, to change this?