I’m in the waiting room for a contrast-enhanced biopsy of my left breast.
I’ve had to wait too long for it.
I always have my annual mammograms in late May. This year, I got a letter saying leftie had a spot that was denser than rightie and thus I needed a contrast-enhanced mammogram. I called, rather than waiting for them to call me, to ask if it was safe to wait until I got back from Europe. They scheduled that second mammogram right away, though. So it was the penultimate day before I left, June 12th, that we did it.
On Monday, June 15th, I got the news that I needed a biopsy. But I was in a hotel room in London. I wrote to my study abroad boss right away. I also called UCD Med right away (leaving a message), to ask if I should wait until I returned in six weeks or if I should try to set up a biopsy in Oxford in July.
My boss got back to me right away. UCD didn’t.
I had a week in London and then a week in Granada, where I was the keynote for a conference. The whole time, I was trying to reach UCD and to figure things out with my travel insurance, who was assuring me I could have a biopsy if it was “medically necessary.”
They postulated that I needed to see a GP & probably have a mammogram in London or Oxford before I could have a biopsy there. I negotiated, explaining what the second mammogram letter said & how it was actually a waste of their money to have me see a GP and to do a third mammogram.
Reader, I convinced them.
On the day my travel insurance was to schedule a biopsy in Oxford for June 8th, UCD finally got back to me, explaining that their scheduler had been on vacation & that I shouldn’t have a biopsy in Oxford, because they would do a regular one & UCD was insisting on the contrast-enhanced one, which is apparently a brand-new way to do it in our health system.
They said I could wait until the last week in July. Which would have been nice to know weeks before. I lost SO many hours to this, hours I could have been sightseeing or, more likely, working.
I thanked my travel insurance for working with me. However, my journey with UCD wasn’t over. They couldn’t give me a concrete appointment time (the calendar wasn’t open). They said they left a note with the scheduler, to put me on sometime on July 29th. It was only last week that they told me exactly when to come in.
But it’s finally happening.
I’ll find out the results Monday afternoon, aka my birthday.
