If Not For My Boobs, This Post May Never Have Happened

One of the reasons I love blogging so much is that whenever something totally completely absolutely annoying happens, the silver lining is that it will be good blog material.

I went to have a mammogram today. My first Canadian one. I walked into the waiting room the one with (I counted them) 20 seats. I sat a good distance away from the other 2 people in the room because as I might have mentioned, there were 20 seats in the room, only 2 occupied, no need to sit on someone's lap, or invade their personal space even a little bit.

Apparently I was the only one who shared this logic or felt the need to be this courteous. About a minute after I sat down another woman came in the room, obviously crazy. Obvious? you might ask waiting for more. Yes, obvious. Bozo hair, loud print dress and Tammy Baker makeup tends to set off my crazy alert button. She proceeded to sit down right next to me. Not one seat over, but right next to me, even though there were now 17 empty seats in the room to choose from.

Next hint this gal was from Crazy Town - perfume. Lots of it. It was the super smelly cheap drug store variety, the vapors of which formed a scent- sword that seared through through my head via my nose. Eu de Side Street Prostitute. Now available at the 7 Eleven.

She then decided to clean/organize her gigantic purse. The noise this made, as you can imagine, was of the shuffling, paper crumpling, change jingling, chewing gum opening variety. This purse had 27 compartments so obviously this was quite a project. Such a project that she had to stop for nourishment in the form of a stick of chewing gum, which she chewed for exactly 2 minutes and then got up to spit it in the wastebasket, and promptly returned to her purse cleaning (after popping another piece of gum in her mouth.)

I started praying. My prayer went like this. Please Person Dressed in Scrubs, call either me or this woman next. Please for the love of all things normal. Please.

My prayer didn't work right away. In fact the members of the Order of Scrub Wearing Workers called a few more people and none of these people were Crazy Lady or me, which prompted Crazy Lady to strike up a conversation with me involving her assessment of the fairness of the medical system including her distress at her long wait (we had been there maybe 10 minutes.)

She told me that she felt like she had been waiting forever, and I nodded in TOTAL agreement. CRAZY takes up a lot of room and makes time move more slowly. (I have had years of experience/research to back up this statement.) She continued the conversation after she spit out the second piece of gum but by that time I was praying to the Other Guy to make something a little less nice happen.

She started monitoring the comings and goings of all the patients. "Look - he just got here and he was called before us!" she said with a twelve-year-old accent, forcing me to put on my best June Cleaver and explain to her that maybe those people are having different procedures done, only I don't think I said procedures because I thought that might be a bit over her head. I might have said "things." This satisfied her, yet opened up another topic entitled "What are You Having Done?"

In the end she got called first. She was having a mammogram and an ultrasound. When she was called before me she justified her place in line by saying "I must be getting the ultrasound first." I told her I was so very happy for her and a part of that sentiment was true. The part before the "for her" bit.

And except for the usual shock and dismayed looks on the faces of the office personnel when I said I didn't bring my official paperwork with me and needed another form from the doctor, most of the rest of the experience was pretty normal.

Well, as normal as anything in my life is.

The preceding was brought to you by My Boobs - Aiming to please since 1958