Bone biopsy

Think of two-word phrases that make you uncomfortable. Things you don't want to say on first dates. Tax audit, root canal, flat tire, overdrawn account, laid off, rent due, corona virus, Donald Trump.

Bone biopsy.

My cancer is back and to determine how bad it is and if there's anything that can be done about it, I had a bone biopsy this afternoon. Having few friends and family members I involve in this unless it's absolutely required, I opted out of anesthesia. Local pain killer only. Doing that meant I could take the train to the city and back without assistance. Hospitals have a thing about that. Taxis? No. It must be someone you know who has a car.

They were like a dog with a bone about it. It took three phone calls yesterday to get it straight and the first person I dealt with once in the curtained off section where I'd put on a gown cheerfully told me she'd be in soon to start an IV for the anesthesia. I made it clear to her, she went off. Soon, the doctor who'd be doing it came in and told me they could hire an Uber to take me home. I explained it all again and said my car was at the train station miles away. Finally, they understood, but she said she wasn't sure how it would be, given that she was drilling into my pelvis. The numbing agent she'd use wouldn't really numb the bone, she said.

I tried not to be testy about it and I think I was OK. Finally, I was in the room where they do it, which is in a radiology unit because they keep sliding you in and out of a scaner to check on where their instruments are. The doctor was young, about thirty, and small. I doubt she weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds. She was nice looking but it's hard to tell in hospitals these days because everyone's wearing masks all the time, including me, of course.

You know how you always hear that the most telling thing about people is their eyes? I'm starting to rethink that. When I go someplace where everyone's wearing a mask I come back feeling like I haven't seen anyone.

Another doctor showed up, a man, who said he would supervise the procedure. Something about it made me think it might have been a recent decision for him to do that. Maybe he had free time (parts of many hospitals are sparse these days because fewer are having elective surgeries). It was fine with me. He seemed to have had more experience than the female doctor. Sometimes a little mansplaining can be all right.

The injections that numbed the area were the same kind they use in dental work and as odd as it sounds, I could tell. It's almost like you're tasting the same thing, even though the skin around your groin doesn't have taste buds. 

Before we got started, the male doctor asked me how I was with pain. "It depends on what kind," I said, and he understood that. Being spanked and having pepper sprayed in your eyes both hurt, but in different ways.

I did all right. They told me I was doing very well. The pain wasn't so bad, but the kind of pain it was, a drill going into the bone near where my right leg had been before it was amputated two years ago, was unsettling. I could hear the beeps of my heart going faster and slower at different times. They'd ask me how I was doing and I'd say "Fine" but my heart would act like a lie detector test, pounding away.

She was thorough. After fifteen minutes of taking out samples, you begin wondering why they don't just take the whole mass out and get it over with. At some points, she actually hammered the drill into the bone deeper. You'd think that'd hurt most of all, but it didn't. When a small woman is whacking at a piece of metal to drive it farther into your bone, you feel big, like a horse or even a whale.

After she was done she said, "You did great." I said, "So did you." She seemed genuinely pleased when I said that. I don't think doctors get good feedback often because most of the time their patients aren't awake to assess how well they do things. I think one reason doctors like to put you under is so they can talk freely among themselves about things without having to worry.

The tissue samples they got were to be sent to pathology to be analyzed, but something about the tone of what little I heard them saying to each other made me think that what they were seeing didn't look good.

The hole the procedure made in my stump is big enough that I've been instructed not to shower for twenty-four hours. It's hot and sticky in the Philadelphia region at the moment, and I worked up a bit of a sweat crutching from and then to the train station. I'll be fine with just a washcloth, but at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon I'm heading for my shower.

Result will be within a week. Nothing to do till then but worry.