Preview: Part 4: You Got that Mammogram in Brooklyn?
Several clinicians at the Manhattan cancer center were frankly surprised that the Brooklyn office had managed to detect this cancer at such an early stage. Apparently invasive lobular carcinomas are sneaky; by the time they’re found, they’re almost always much larger than my tiny tumor. “You’re very lucky they found it this early,” said my surgeon.
This was the first time after my cancer diagnosis that I was called “lucky,” although far from the last, and it definitely did not resonate. I’d be lucky if I hadn’t gotten cancer; short of that, I’m just marginally less unlucky than others whose cancers are larger and more aggressive.
Marginally.
“And you had your mammogram in Brooklyn?” asked the Manhattan radiologists, nurses, surgeon. Yes, in Brooklyn, where the mammo tech and radiologist apparently had not graduated from Clown College.