Back when boobs mattered, I visited a doctor.

Let me explain: a thousand years ago I had a job – a job that provided health insurance. (What a charming trifle that was!). Anyway, I was visiting a doctor for some routine girl-thing (remember that quaint curtsy?), and the doctor found a small lump. On my thyroid.

The thyroid is a gland at the front of your throat. It sits just underneath the larynx, and its main job is to frighten you into thinking you’re going to die. If a doctor roots around in your junk long enough, he will find a lump. Give a physician enough time and a solid reach, and he will find a bulge on SOMETHING. And this guy had a good six inches on me. (Rimshot!) I’m kidding. Where was I…

Anyway, this First Lump doc sent me to a Second Lump doc, an endocrinologist. Endocrinologists are doctors who specialize in paying off their student loans, so they absolutely adore insured women with shit in their throats.

I walked into Second Lump’s office with what we called in those days “a referral” which we carried in “on paper” that we had “impaled upon the end of our spears.” I’m kidding! Women weren’t allowed to carry spears until Britney. (Oops! I did it again.)

I waited in the lobby for a season. Finally I was called into an intake room by a nurse. Or a nurse’s assistant. Or a troll of some sort with a stethoscope around her neck and a death wish over her head, apparently. See, here’s what happened: this Second Lump triage nurse weighed me, measured me, and took my blood pressure. She peered over her glasses at my chart, looked me up and down, and said “So you’re here to follow up after your mastectomy?”

I glanced at my smooth sweater and said, “No, I’m here because you’re a retard. “ Then I hit her with my penis.

No I didn’t. I stabbed her with my Britney spears.

Nah. What I actually did (because this really happened) is went dry-mouthed and pathetic for the space of about two beats. I pointed weakly at my throat. I began to stutter. Then I straightened up all 5-foot-9 inches, 125 pounds of me (I know because it was on the chart), and said, “I hope your children survive the chlamydia you gave them.”

Actually, I have no idea what happened next because I’ve blocked out everything after the S.W.A.T. team arrived.

The point is, I’m fabulous, and so are my boobs. Two perfect miniatures, unscarred and arrogant. They are twin heroic effigies of a life lived upright against the relentless pull of both gravity and scorn. Perky. (Yeah, I said it.)

Also, the lump was nothing. Kind of like that intake nurse. I bet her burning and itching are almost gone.

 

Erin Waugh, True Stories in the Key of E-Flat

5 March 2015