After the mammogram comes the fear

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

Two years ago, it looked like a rich grandparent's parlor. The carpet was thick, the upholstered couches and chairs, elegant. Everything matched: furniture, drapes, end tables, lamps. The room evoked a sense of calm and comfort.

And yet it was all pretense, mental Valium, because the Sagoff Center at Faulkner Hospital was never a parlor. It is, and always was, a waiting area for women who've come for mammograms. A door opens and on the other side of a designer wall women sit in thin, cotton hospital robes on hard, armless chairs, waiting to be X-rayed and told they can go back into the land of the living - at least for a while.

Before breast cancer was an official epidemic, the parlor could be assuaging. But now it isn't and no longer even tries to be. The carpet is stained and worn in places. The plush chairs have been squeezed together to make room for as many chairs as possible. Nearly 100 women come here each day. There is a sense of urgency now, even in the waiting area. Fear is in a holding pattern, but you can feel its cold bottomlessness as it circles around.

Beyond the door, in the area where women sit alone, without the husband or friend who has come along with them "just in case" - it's always "just in case" - fear is more brazen. It spins out of control sometimes. It plays games. What if something's wrong? it asks. What are you going to do then?

Some women are here for the first time. Others have come for annual exams, callbacks, second opinions. One has flown up from Florida and is nervously awaiting her turn. Another, 81, has already been diagnosed. She is scheduled for a mastectomy in three days and is here for blood work and consultation. Another, a blonde woman about 50, on the other side of the room, clutches a portfolio of X-rays.

Those of us here for a callback tiptoe around possibilities we don't want to imagine. We hope the film was blurred, that this is all an exercise in caution. But we have read the statistics: One of every nine American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. These numbers terrify us.

I have five, maybe six, more X-rays. I don't know. I can't count. On the back-lit wall are the routine X-rays, with an area circled. Fear homes in on these circles. I try to choke it back, but it is choking me.

I return to the waiting room. The wait is long. Other women come and go. They have their routine X-rays, see a doctor, put on their street clothes, and leave. Every time one does, there is mental applause in the room. The 81-year-old talks about her family, her life, her other operations. She is sweet and brave and her spirit is like balm. Still, the clock ticks slowly - for a woman with dark curly hair who has been called back; for the woman from Florida who is visibly strained; for the blonde holding medical records, and for me.

I look through the glass that separates me from my friend, Caryn, breast cancer survivor, out in the parlor, pretending to read, who has come to support me. "It's nothing. Don't worry," I said to her, four years ago when she found a lump. She couldn't say "Don't worry" to me, as I can't say "Don't worry" to anyone else anymore. We know better. We both know too many women with cancer.

The woman with the dark curly hair is told she is fine, gets dressed, and leaves. The 81-year-old leaves. Women who came in long after me leave. The fear that has been solid up to now, hard, but contained, like metal, turns to liquid. I am trapped in a cave and the water is rising and it is drowning me.

I look for air pockets. I concentrate on staying above this fear. But it is winning. It is making me look at all the possibilities I don't want to see. "The waiting's the worst," someone whispers. We all nod our heads and agree.

My name is finally called. The women look at me as I walk out of the room. A radiologist introduces himself, shakes my hand, smiles, and says I have a cyst, just a cyst, nothing to worry about.

He does an ultrasound and isolates it on a television screen and explains slowly, gently, how he can tell it's a cyst. I take a deep breath. Fear is at ankle level again.

I walk back to the waiting area smiling. The women smile back. Caryn smiles.

I feel relief and gratitude, not joy. Joy would be an empty parlor greeting me. Joy would be a lock on the door of the Sagoff Center, and an out-of-business sign. Joy would be breast cancer relegated to the ranks of polio - a disease of the past.

But there is standing room only in the parlor as I leave.