Ultra ultra sound

Had ultrasound today in exactly the same room I had the one where I found out my 'cyst' was in fact a 2.8cm tumour. Day started badly - pouring rain and my mother (chauffeur) sick as a dog. Francois volunteered to take me instead. He is a great driver and general navigator and all would have been fine had I not got entirely the wrong address in my head for the hospital
and made him screech to a halt at what I was sure was the only available parking meter in central London - which turned out to be quite far from where I thought the hospital was, and a great deal further from where it actually was. I also had not taken into account the fact that 'taking some work to do while he was waiting', meant charging along W1 with a backpack stuffed full of Merlot... and to make matters worse, I developed a sudden and dramatic nosebleed all over his new cream interiors at about Camden Town.

Anyway - we finally made it only 20 minutes late - they were very calm and made me a peppermint tea while waiting. While I nervously fiddled with my 18 layers of clothing and blood stained tissues, Francois filled in the time by holding said Merlot up to the ceiling halogen lights to determine level of sediment - none - while the rest of the waiting room looked on. It's hard to tell what they thought given the general level of anxiety on the faces of everyone in the breast screening unit. The only exception today being a very loud dark haired woman who was boring her ashen faced (me in July) friend with a new car brochure and trying to elicit her opinion on 'jean blue' or 'graphite grey' paintwork and the advantages of having a CD player fitted in the showroom. I was busy counting how many wigs I could see and wondering which of these two women were here for scans when a nurse greeted dark-haired car enthusiast like long-lost friend - 'Oh lovely to see you again, didn't expect to see you so soon, how ARE you bla bla', which momentarily confused me as I was so sure that ashen-faced woman was the cancer candidate - to which she replied, 'Oh, I'm fine now - completely recovered - but you remember my friend who held my hand throughout all my treatment - well now I'm here holding hers....!'

Putting aside the fact that I found her concept of hand-holding a little wide of the mark and the fact that if someone had sat there with me droning on and on about the five point power steering capacity of the Audi 400 while I was waiting to find out whether I had a life-threatening illness, I would have preferred to have one - putting all that aside - I found it astonishing that the nature of this epidemic is such that soon everyone in the waiting room will know each other. I commented on this later to the nurse who said she entirely agreed - it was shocking - and that was why luckily she worked there and could give herself a mammogram every 6 months...

Anyway - finally they called me in - forgot to mention earlier that I must have mistakenly put my middle name on a form some months ago and throughout this entire process every medical interview has started with someone shouting 'Mary-Elizabeth' in a sing song voice across the waiting room. I don't even know where to start to try to correct this so I have not bothered - and truth be known, I find that there is something curiously comforting about the Waltonism.

Anyway - finally called in - same room, same nurses - different doctor in same body (voice, manner, air of breezy confidence) but entirely different experience. Hushed tones replaced by pleasant surprise as he pointed out that at its absolutely widest, widest part, my terrible tumour has been knocked back to a mere 13mm. In other words - less than half the size of its original evil self. Brilliant. He actually said that it was in the absolute maximum shrinkage capacity and is now clearly responding fantastically well to Dr Plowmans chemo cocktail.

I think it's got more to do with lasagnes, casseroles and fish pies....