I wanna hold your hand...

On the post called "You want fries with that?" I referred to a double MRI-guided needle biopsy. I'd like to revisit that for a sec.

This procedure?
Is crazy.

They DO inject your breasts with a local anesthetic called lidocaine. But at one point, on the first side, when she was using the biopsy drilly-thing, she hit a nerve. It felt like an ice pick. I hollered, and I'm not a hollerer. I yanked back, forgetting in the pain of the moment that my breasts were compressed in a mammogram-type apparatus. After the combination of these three things: nerve+holler+yank, I pretty much had had enough. I began to weep, big fat tears that ran down my nose onto the machine. (I was face-down, remember) My body was shaking. It was awful.

At this point, when I was feeling just DONE, I felt someone take my hand. She didn't just touch my hand, she HELD it firmly. It calmed me in a way I cannot explain. My breathing evened out. The radiologist completed the procedure. My tears dried.

When I was flipped over and being bandaged, I looked around at the seven women who stood in the room. I asked, "Who held my hand?" They all pointed to one gal. I said to her, "You need to keep doing that. I was NOT gonna make it. And when you held my hand, that changed. Thank you for doing that." She smiled and said, "Sometimes it's just what you need."

A couple days later, as I was replaying this traumatic event, I had the most wonderful epiphany. It dawned on me that the people I have in my life are ALL the kind of people who would have done what this gal did. God has blessed me with HAND HOLDERS.

This blows me away. You know why?

Because not everyone has friends like this. I am a woman blessed. Lord, help me to remember.