out of the closet

It was my first day back at work today, after three weeks off due to the whole chest infection / miscarriage / Christmas-and-New-Year extravaganza. It wasn't easy going back; it never is anyway after time off but after (yet another) miscarriage, it was even more difficult. It was also physically difficult as in my absence there had been a landslide of patients' notes, and I could barely open the door to my office, and once I did, I had to excavate my way to my desk.

And, of course, I had to answer the usual "did you have a good Christmas" questions. But something happened and instead of smiling and nodding and saying "lovely, thank you" I found myself saying "I had a miscarriage". My words flew up, if you will :-) Of course everyone was lovely and sympathetic but it did make people wonder how on earth to get out of the room and the conversation gracefully. I have NO idea what made me say it the first time, I really don't. Perhaps because I'm still so sad. Or because I just don't have enough energy to pretend that everything is okay. Whatever the reason, I climbed out of the miscarriage closet at work and have found myself face-to-face with the elephant in the room.

In other news, I saw the Mad Professor about the lump under my breast this afternoon. I couldn't get to see my GP between Christmas and New Year and during the intervening days the lump has grown and is now visible from space. The Mad Professor is going to do an FNA (fine needle aspiration) tomorrow afternoon. Bless his heart, he's told me to go along to his clinic before his session starts, so effectively during his lunch break. He told me that he was going to insert a thin needle into the middle of the lump to aspirate it and that he couldn't use any anaesthetic and so it might be "a bit uncomfortable" and asked if I am okay with needles. I didn't want to tell him that I consider needles to be my friends in case that sounded, I don't know, insane, so I just reassured him that I would be fine...