Biopsy taken

And I should hear if there is a problem Friday morning.

I had a "vacuum needle biopsy." They numb the skin, cut a small slit in the skin, and then, using ultrasound to make sure they are in the right place, suck some tissue up into a reservoir. The doctor tells me that they took less than a cc of tissue. There's a lot of pulling and poking, but everything was pretty numbed up. So they took a sample, and after taking a picture of it, decided that they needed a little more tissue. Except this time, the tissue they wanted was outside the anesthetized area of the breast.

There's a study out there that those of you with chronic pain will react to with "Well, duh..." It shows that when a person is already in pain (today I was at 8 on the 1-10 scale), drawing blood will be perceived as more painful that someone who doesn't already have a baseline of pain. Multiply that by about 29 for "removing tissue from the breast." I screamed. And this wasn't a little girly scream. This was a full-throated, deep-voiced, full alto scream. After I screamed, I started sobbing and continued to sob for 15 minutes. It's been an hour, and the tears have finally stopped. Jumping Jehosophat, that hurt.

At least I know that I startled the knickers off the nurse and the doctor in the office, and drew every other nurse to the door of the ultrasound room. It was a LOUD scream. Doug didn't hear it in the waiting room, though, which is just as well, since had he recognized it, he would have been frantic.

Moral of the story? If you are well-endowed, and need a breast tissue biopsy, ask for extra anesthesia.