What a crappy day. Tiring, stressful, and generally unpleasant.

I had that follow-up mammogram at 3 this afternoon, and it wasn't a
particularly pleasant experience. The radiographer said that there is
an area in my left breast that looks denser than the rest, so they
needed to do more views to see if it's of any concern or just caused
by glandular tissue "getting in the way". The person who reads the
x-rays is on holiday for the rest of this week, so she'll only look at
it on Monday, which means I'll only hear from them towards the end of
next week.

The whole thing went badly from start to finish ... Nothing dramatic,
just lots of small stresses which added together.

I only found out that the mammogram was scheduled for this afternoon
at 7.30 this morning, for instance. The reason for that was that the
appointment letter had, for some reason, gone to our old address, even
though the letter from the consultant saying I needed a follow-up came
here. Luckily I happened to check the old house for post this
morning, or I would have missed the appointment entirely.

And then, when I got to the hospital, I couldn't find anywhere to
park. It's crazy at our local hospital, there are two huge staff car
parks and one tiny patient/visitor car park, and absolutely nowhere
else within a mile radius to park. And they have enough nerve to
actually charge you to use their damn car park too. Anyway, so I
drove round and round and got more and more frantic, drove out of the
hospital and looked for somewhere to park on the street (there's
nowhere, it's all double yellow lines for miles in every direction)
drove back in again and finally, finally found a spot with two minutes
to go before my appointment time. Which was stressful for me because
I hate being late with a passion. Not that I needed to have worried
about being late, really, because as it turned out I had to wait 45
minutes before I actually got seen.

The radiographer was very pleasant, but we kept having these slightly
awkward interactions where one of us would misunderstand what the
other had said. For instance, she did the first view of my breast,
then disappeared off to see if it was good enough. Came back in, said,
sorry,we have to do it over, to which I replied "Oh well, better get
it right, huh?". By which I meant, better to redo it than settle for
a bad film. But which she took as criticism of her - as if I was
saying "You'd better get it right this time!" I tried to explain what
I'd meant but it was all very awkward. You know when you hear
yourself talking and talking and you're just making things worse
rather than better, and eventually you realise it's no use and fall
silent in despair? It was like that.

And then I made the mistake of thinking I'd run into Tesco's and pick
up something for supper - since there was literally no food at home -
and the grocery store was filled with men buying flowers and
chocolates for their wives and I was unreasonably annoyed that Bobby -
with whom I was already upset because he didn't go with me to the
mammogram, even though I'd told him I didn't need him to - was not
engaged in similar activities. Even though I don't actually want
tacky mass-produced Valentine's Day gifts. And even though
I wasn't buying them for him. And then they only had a
couple of checkouts open so I had to wait in line for almost 20
minutes, which made me even more irritable.

Anyway. So here I am at home, finally. Bobby has made me a cup of
coffee, Stephen has just made a salad, there's duck roasting in the
oven, the girls are being cuddly and adorable and Bobby is in the
garage trying to fix the tumble dryer, and I am realising how much I
love them all. So maybe this Valentine's day won't be a total
write-off after all.