This Is No Orgasmatron!

November 2013

Today I'm having a breast MRI scan. One of the issues with having breast cancer at an earlier than average age is that the breast tissue can be too dense to be definitively scanned with conventional mammography, so while we know for sure that I have cancer in my right breast, my doctors can't say with absolute certainty that my left one is clear.

In case you've never had an MRI, you're placed on a bed which rolls into a tubular machine. It's a little claustrophobic, but not particularly invasive or unpleasant. The procedure for a breast MRI, though, is a little different than the scans I've had in the past.

I'm asked to lie on my front, with my chest on a scanning platform and my arms above my head. My breasts – and there's no way to describe this that makes it sound dignified – dangle below me into two holes in the platform, under which there are plastic cups. Large, cold plastic cups.

Not for the first time during an important medical test, I get a fit of the giggles. The radiographer pauses in her explanation of the test I'm about to have to ask if I'm feeling OK.

“Yes....just....” I gasp through my now slightly hysterical mouthfuls of laughter. “I feel like some sort of bizarre, medical Barbarella.”

The radiographer starts laughing, and then we're both gone for at least five minutes. Every time one of us stops, the other starts. We decide to name the procedure the Inverted Barbarella Scan. It somehow seems far easier to bear the possibility of bad results when the test itself, and our now-shared name for it, make me laugh. Once we're back under control, the woman puts large noise-cancelling headphones over my ears, switches on the CD – I came armed with Tori Amos – and rolls me into the giant magnetic contraption.

Thankfully, the scan later shows that my right breast is alone in its murderous intentions, acting entirely without the aid of an accomplice.