All Clear

All Clear...

Those were the lovely words I heard after my trip to the Royal Marsden last week.

All that worry, waiting around, poking and prodding the lumps and bumps and fretting over the blue circles drawn on my boob in blue felt tip - just hormones.

The IVF treatment I'm going through is playing havoc with my hormones. It's already played a mean trick on my waistline, giving me a flabby belly and wide water-retaining hips (and the hips don't lie, man!).

Now it's playing games with my boobs, ducts, glands - anything, you name it.

However it's better that my strange bumps and lumps are just a reaction to the hormone-stimulating drugs than anything more sinister. Hoorah!

Royal Marsden here I am...

Royal Marsden's Surrey waiting room is a relatively cheery place, considering. It has the air of a 1990s country B&B and temperate air conditioning. There are only a couple of people here on their own, like I am, as most people have come with a partner or friend or relative for moral support. 

I have also just signed a consent form for any tissue samples to be used for research. Not sure if I will have tissue removed as pretty sure I just have cysts brought on by the IVF treatment  but I have never had a breast x-ray or mammogram before, so I am naturally both curious and a little ... nervous? No, not nervous. Excited isn't the right word either. Intrigued maybe. 

Apparently a mammogram is not an all-singing birthday woolly elephant. Must remember that next time I send my friends one to surprise them.

No; a mammogram is a breast x-ray. I do not think I will have this as I was told by my GP I was still young enough to have an ultrasound done. I am expecting cold gel on ma boob ('maboob' apparently means 'love' in Arabic. Well, I do love ma boobs) and a small hand-held x-ray type device like they do for baby ultrasounds. 

Hopefully my boob is not having a baby. Apart from the Martian in the original Total Recall, tri-boobed individuals are not considered attractive.

So here I sit, typing away, waiting to hear someone attempt to pronounce my name and then watch them look surprised when they see a blatantly Anglo-Saxon Englishwoman (myself) respond to them. Nobody expects me to answer to my name. 

Oh well I have to get my kicks somewhere, for in about five minutes I will be having my boob squeezed and prodded by some well-meaning mammary expert in latex gloves. To think some people pay for this. NHS does it for free. Bless the NHS!