It’s here again.

October.

The scary month.

2005 wasn’t all that long ago. That’s when I got a tattoo. I said I wanted a smiley face on that late October morning. The technician smiled, and said it would only be a dot: a marker for my radiation therapy.

Then 39 treatments later I taped a smiley face over that marker. The techs laughed, and we celebrated that last treatment with my Cancer Buddies, and ate smiley face Christmas cookies.

It felt like dejavu all over again last month.

That’s when extensive mammogram retakes called for another surgical biopsy.

Just what I wanted in the midst of a pandemic. I kicked myself for putting off last year’s September tests, and decided to put off the surgery.

“Don’t you want to know?” asked Jill, a Daughter from Another Mother. “Do you really want to sit around worrying about it?”

Soon I had an appointment with a surgeon, and actually found her office in a maze of OKC Mercy Hospital buildings.

Next was a temperature check to get into the building, then a wrist band, and finally I saw the surgeon.

After that there were appointments for a COVID test and another marker, but they called it a “scout.” It’s a guidance system for the surgeon.

The numbing shot was an ouchie-bite, but I didn’t feel a thing when they injected a minuscule locater. It was like something out of a Star Trek when they checked the scout’s activation, and my boob beeped.

Surgery was two days later.

More paperwork at the hospital.

More questions.

More waiting.

More of the same questions along with several breathing tests, blood pressure tests, heart rate tests, standing on digital scales, telling my name, date of birth, and which surgery I’d have.

There were so many protocols and checks and rechecks, and I was irritated because I just wanted to get on with it. Then decided I should appreciate their persistence in getting everything right.

The surgeon quizzed me about the procedure, and which breast, then wrote “this one,” or something like that on my left one. I felt relieved before I went off to la-la-land.

There were no problems after the surgery, except waiting 10 days on an all clear pathology report. Let my mammogram

Let my mammogram delay be a reminder to those who forgot, or put it off. Also, don’t look at those numbers on the hospital’s scales. They are scary, and wrong! Each time they showed that I weigh 9.7 pounds more than my scales at home.