| I am lying on the biopsy bed, paper sheet rustling each time I try to find comfort on the stiff table. The room is too bright, the air too full of growing anticipation.
A sweet nurse is doing his best to put me at ease, and before I even ask, he is directing my husband, Joe, to sit beside me, showing him where he can touch my arm and not interfere with the coming procedure.
That done, we wait. And wait. The doctor is an hour late.
Joe squeezes my shoulder. I stare at the ceiling, willing myself to settle.
Finally, the doctor breezes in. He doesn’t look at or greet me. Instead, he barks an admonishment to Joe: “You can’t sit there! You’re down there.” He gestures to the isolated chair by the door.
Immediately I feel a crack in my foundation splinter.
Echos of past biopsies crowd into the room but if the doctor or nurses notice they don’t say.
The doctor silently swabs me with iodine, then drapes me, nearly covering my face. I blink back the nausea that threatens to envelope me from the anticeptic fumes trapped in the drapes with me.
Then, without warning, I feel the sharp sting of the lidocaine in my neck.
Then the biopsy begins. Five needle core extractions: insert the needle and jiggle it vigorously to disloge cells for examination.
Despite the lidocaine, the first two insertions feel like the needle is slicing through a nerve deep inside of me. I can’t help it: I jump. Reflexively, I immediately feel shame and mumble a stricken apology for moving. I dig my nails into my palms and will myself to stay still. Be a good patient.
The doctor says nothing. I’ve known pain before. Years ago, as a birth doula, I learned that pain can be purposeful: an alert from the body to pivot, to move toward safety or transformation. Pain can guide. It can open. But suffering is different.
Suffering arrives when pain meets isolation. When you have no agency, no soft landing place. When the person holding the instrument can’t — or won’t — see the person in front of them, only a problem to be solved before the conveyor belt of the medical system delivers the next “problem.”
Today, I feel the difference acutely. The pain was in my neck. The suffering was in the silence between us. As the doctor works (stab, jiggle, extract), I find myself remembering all the people I once sat beside in hospital rooms. Laboring women gripping my hand, breathing through the contractions. I think about how I whispered small things to them to help tether them: you’re doing beautifully, you’re safe, you never have to do that contraction again, I’m right here.
I gave them a road marker, too, telling them where they were in the process of giving birth so they wouldn’t feel so aimless and overwhelmed by the pain.
It struck me that those tiny offerings were the difference between endurance and despair. The difference between being in pain and being alone in pain.
I’ve been thinking about this ever since: the way healing depends not just on what we do but on how we do it. The tone of voice. The willingness to witness. The simple act of saying, I see you. After the biopsy, the doctor leaves as quickly and silently as he arrived. A nurse removes the drapping from my face and body, inviting me to sit up. She pauses, surprised to see my tears.
“Oh, are you ok? Was it painful or….?
“Yes, it really hurt and it was triggering.” I’m done being the good patient.
“Oh.”
Yeah, oh.
***
If you’ve ever been in a cold room like that — literal or metaphorical—I want you to know what I’ve been telling myself in the week since this biopsy: it wasn’t your fault. You deserved presence. You deserved compassionate care. I know you have lived your own version of that sterile room: the bad news phone call, the insensitive staff, the friend who stopped calling because they didn’t know what to say…
These are the quiet traumas that live in the body long after the procedures end. Writing, for me, has always been a way to offer those moments a new home. To lift them out of my body and give them shape on the page, where they (and I) can breathe.
Art becomes medicine. Story becomes witness.
**Guest Author: April Stearns**
April Stearns is an author, magazine publisher, and writing coach based in California who was diagnosed with breast cancer at 35 years old. Sign up for her free heart-centered writing jumpstart guide via her website.
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