The Perfect Book For the Mammography Waiting Room

and yet I am not sure I can finish it

The scene: I have to have a mammogram. Oof, and double oof because I had breast cancer in 2019 (did the things, okay for now) and then last year somebody saw something and i had to go back in for a re-scan, which they sent me a lovely letter by snail mail telling me was super common and I should absolutely not worry about.

I received that letter approximately a week after I foolishly clicked on the mammogram results at 5:25 on a Friday from the parking lot of a hockey game, interpreted “anomaly” as a death sentence and frantically started calling every one of my doctors that I could. It’s a small town, people, and probably a terrible place to be a doctor; one of mine is also the husband of the school nurse at my kids’ elementary school. I was talked off the ledge and seen and cleared within a week… before I even received the “don’t worry!” letter.

This probably explains whatever notes in my file led today’s lovely technician to a) get my name correct and b) be very very kind to me and c) take me by the hand and show me the resulting images, which, without her actually saying as much, strongly suggested to me that there would be no return visit this time around (which later docs confirmed).

BUT THAT IS NOT WHY YOU ARE HERE.

No, you want to know, what is this perfect read of which you speak? What did you have tucked away that proved to be exactly the right thing for a dread-filled waiting room? (Look, it’s not coming back. Probably. And if it does it will be different, probably, and this probably isn’t how they will find it, and all the things and I KNOW THAT but I am allowed to have this as a stressful experience, okay? It just is. And the next person who pats me on the head and says “I’m sure it will all be okay” is going to get bitten.)

It was this:

Zero Stars Would Not Recommend

The first line of this book is as follows: "Dan Foster was on his fifth Miller Lite when the sun exploded."

Look, if that’s not going to put a mammogram in perspective, I don’t know what is. And obviously it is very funny—here is this couple, on this secluded island in the Bahamas having a lovely time in Building B (the, you know, middle class building) but then when the sun explodes they have to deal with Building A (the rich) and Building C (you know where this is going) and what do you even do, at that point, besides go back to the room and drink the minibar—and then what?

It put me in EXACTLY the right frame of mind to probably be told I probably do not have cancer that probably would not be that bad anyway, probably, even though that process is really decently painful. (Haven’t done it yet because you don’t have to? Congrats, trust me. Haven’t done it yet bc you’re putting it off? You probably should.)

The sample chapters in my e-reader ended at that point. (I moved on to the sample chapters of Every Tom, Dick & Harry by Elinor Lipman, which consisted entirely of: two title pages, the dedication, the publishing minutiae and the table of contents, which read like this: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. and so on to 43. and then ended so all I know about the book is that it has 43 unnamed chapters, so if you’re read it and liked it lmk.

And…. I have not yet pressed buy. I don’t know. It sounds funny, it sounds fun, it was well written and clearly going to work and I know from the small rec I read that it ends on a decently hopeful-ish note sort of but…

I’m feeling a little bit like I’m drinking the mini-bar on a doomed island in general, because news, even with my reprieve from the medical system (which is basically inevitably temporary, unless something faster and doctor-free strikes me down first, because I am mortal—I mean, sure, I’m a witch and all that but a mortal witch). I have tried to be of good cheer, because most of our country wanted this including my own parents, and maybe you too, I can’t know.

I just liked it when we didn’t plan wars on group chat, and I’m a fan of vaccines in general and although I’m all for local control of education up to a point, it does seem to me that it’s probably better if we all learn pretty much the same basic history. Slavery was bad. Fight me, Florida. I also understand the economic theory behind tariffs but I’m not convinced this is going to go as planned—although the NYT was able to find one happy group of people: shrimp boat captains! Shrimp boat captains are happy that imported shrimp will now cost more and their shrimp can be competitive, which is in fact how tariffs are supposed to help but also means ALL the shrimp costs more. Which is also how these things work, it’s a choose your poison situation but I’m not convinced the people who chose which of us to poison and how here really thought it through (maybe if I could see their group chat…)

Yeah, so…there were things about the other people running that I didn’t love, either, but I’m not sure I can handle even a funny apocalypse at the moment.

UPDATE: I’m in Mexico as you read this, probably pretending to be Canadian by speaking Spanish with a French accent (I speak French with a Spanish accent so how much harder could the reverse be…) and I DID download the rest of the book. If it continues to be a things could be worse distraction, I’ll be sure to let you know.