The road to cancer diagnosis is not for the modest. After getting multiple mammograms and sonograms on multiple days with multiple different technicians, you get pretty used to your ladies hanging out all over the place in front of total strangers. So when they tell you "go get a biopsy" at that point you're nervous but somewhat inured to being bare up top. But my biopsy experience kind of kicked it up a notch on awkwardness.

I went and laid down on the bed in a small room with one technician, one nurse, and a nurse practitioner (3 strangers so far). I got myself into the threadbare linen straitjacket of a gown (which you then just take off-- so I've never figured out the point of having my ladies covered for the two seconds it takes to walk from behind the curtain to the bed) and lay back on the bed with your arm above your head so everything's wide open, clear, and ready for lift off.

The sonogram technician got her paddle all greased up, pulled open my gown and got my lady-in-question all good and poofed up so she could find the suspicious lump on her monitor...and in walks the radiologist.

Who just happens to be a guy from church who I'd just spent an hour talking to a week before. We apparently share time spent living in Portland and the mutual opinion that the TV show Portlandia accurately represents Portland.

"Hi Church guy, here I am spread out on a table with my ladies bare" is what I'm thinking, but he doesn't even blink. He gets greased up, gets out the wicked needle cell-harvesting torture device, goes right in and starts doing Fred Armisin Portlandia impressions as he's bent over my lady. By the time that needle does it's click-flesh-cutting thing, all the nurses are giggling.

I'm still there laid out bare on a table wincing from having flesh harvested from my chest, but at least Fred Armisin's got the room in stitches.