Life in the Bottle has a couple of observations.

The breast cancer journey is not all crisis and panic. Occasionally, there is cause for laughter; in fact, I have recently realized that I have a rather sick sense of humor when it comes to my breast cancer experiences. The first glimmer of humor I found in the whole situation was actually the day of my mastectomy at the hospital. Prior to surgery, I was required to go down to the Nuclear Medicine Department at Florida Hospital. There they were to inject the biopsy site with a radioactive material enabling the surgeon during surgery to more effectively locate the Sentinel Node. As I sat in a wheel chair being rolled into the bowels of the hospital, I could hear very loud construction type noises ahead. I kept thinking that the orderly pushing my chair would veer in another direction, soon, to go away from all the noise and chaos. Instead, on we went, closer and closer to the huge black plastic curtain and the din of a jackhammer. When I knew that we were absolutely not going to veer away from the jackhammer from beyond the River Styx, I thought, "Oh, my! They're really pulling out the big guns down in nuclear medicine!". At the very last minute, the orderly turned the chair to the left, followed the black plastic curtain, then wheeled me into a waiting elevator. Whew! That was a close one! Fortunately, in this day of modern medicine, the implementation of surgical jackhammers appears to be passe.