Biopsy Day
The day of the biopsy arrived. I had a quiet resignation. I had been raising red flags for months, trying to get medical help, and now the time had finally arrived. Knowing how much I needed the biopsy didn’t make my anxiety about the procedure go away. I was very alert and focused on everything happening, until the anesthesiologist finally came into the patient pre-op area and started talking with me. My mind started to wonder as we talked—I was in self preservation mode.
I told the anesthesiologist about my phobia of having tubes in my throat and having someone hold a mask on me. He understood and came back right before they wheeled me to the Operating Room. He put something into my IV and I fell asleep. That worked well for me. Having a good conversation with the anesthesiologist is something I highly recommend. They are there to make you comfortable, but they need to know from you what you want.
The painful issues that had followed me for months would finally be examined, sampled, measured, frozen and taken to Pathology for analysis. With this diagnostic procedure I wasn’t moving toward reassurance. I was moving toward definition and understanding of what really was happening.
I thought about a particular moment when I would stopped being a person in charge of myself, as I transitioned to becoming a body in a system, completely unaware of everything during the procedure. Paperwork signed. Belongings set aside. Clothing exchanged for a gown that had been worn by so many others for their surgeries. I was still me, but I was no longer in charge of what happened. I was no longer thinking about what comes when I wake up.
Control doesn’t disappear all at once. It started when I woke up at home, and could not eat anything—doctor’s orders.Control slips away a little more during checkin at the hospital and I’m told where to go and wait. I waited with two family members while other people are prepped for surgery ahead of me.
Observation: There was a hush in the outer waiting area, like when you attend a memorial service, or walk respectfully into a large cathedral while other people are in communion.
Control continued to be handed over in the pre-op area when I gave myself over to the system, including my shoes, comfortable shirt and jacket, my keys, my phone—everything. I was now fully following a script that I was learning as the system moved me closer to surgery.
And then the most complete surrender—allowing my consciousness to be turned off while others carried me through something I could not witness. I had so many thoughts racing through my brain for months about the biopsy that seemed so far into the future, and now I was on an one way ride being taken to the room where it would happen.
I would wake up in a different state, using my ”state machine” training when I was a software developer. And there would be no returning to the state prior to the biopsy.A new ‘state of time’ accelerating would replace my pre-biopsy feeling of at least having some control.
The procedure itself was not what I had feared—mostly. It would be uncomfortable, and my body would be exposed to people I would never meet. Being in the operating room would be deeply personal—but it would not a challenge—since I would be unaware of everything.
My job was simple: relax in my gown with the open back, breathe, and let the anesthesia put me to sleep. The world would move around me for several hours, while I went through a small death of awareness, losing several hours that I would never get back.
When the biopsy was over, something shifted. Not the larger live or die question—that still waited—but my body felt different. First, my privacy was removed, during the biopsy and soon for many procures during the rest of 2024, all of 2025 and into 2026. “May I take a look” was something I heard so many times that I stopped counting at 100 doctors, nurses, PA’s, NP’s, pain and wound technicians, emergency room staff, and others. During one appointment, the exam room door opened and 10 or 12 people walked in, along with the two doctors. I knew what was coming—”may be take a look?” Sure, why not! This happened more than once—it’s just part of being in a teaching hospital.
Second, my private area that had been bleeding for months had been addressed, repaired, stabilized. It was the first time in a long while that things felt quieter. Not resolved. Just quieter as the open cancer wound and bleeding were repaired at the surface.
I left the hospital without answers, but not without change. Something had been done. Something had been taken. Somewhere, tissue now existed outside my body, carrying information I did not yet have. The waiting would continue—but it would be a different kind of waiting now. The kind where imagination begins to loosen its grip, even as the truth had not yet arrived in a pathology report. An ‘uncertain certainty was coming.’
What remained was the waiting. Not the kind measured by clocks, but the kind that stretches inward, where each hour carries more weight than the last. My tissue samples were in the hands of someone I would never know. Somewhere, they were forming answers about my body and my future. I was no longer imagining what might be wrong—but I was not yet allowed to know what was true about my current state. And so I stood in that narrow space between relief and reckoning, waiting for the words that would decide everything.
Preparing for a Biopsy: What to Expect and What
Matters
If you are heading into a biopsy, you may feel anxious, resigned, alert, or numb. All of that is normal. This guide is written from my lived experience to help you walk into the procedure with clarity and steadiness.
• You can know the biopsy is necessary and still feel afraid. Logic does not cancel fear.
• Most anxiety happens before the procedure. Anticipation is often harder than the biopsy itself.
• Talk to your anesthesiologist. Tell them your fears (masks, tubes, loss of control). They can adjust your experience.
• Control fades in stages — fasting, check-in, waiting, changing into a gown, handing over belongings. Recognize this as transition, not weakness.
• Allowing anesthesia is an act of trust. Your only job is to breathe and let the team do their work.
• The procedure may be less dramatic than the months of imagining it.
• A biopsy is not reassurance — it is definition. It replaces speculation with data.
• Waiting afterward feels different. Answers are forming, even if you do not have them yet.
• Something changes the moment tissue leaves your body for pathology. You have moved forward.
• You are still you — even inside a hospital system. Your voice and questions still matter.
Questions to Ask Your Doctor
• What type of anesthesia will be used (general, local)?
• Can we adjust anything if I have specific concerns (mask, tubes, nausea, waking anxiety)?
• How long will the procedure take?
• What should I expect when I wake up?
• How long will I be in Recovery before I can go home?
• When and how will I receive the pathology results?
• Who do I contact if I have concerns after I go home?
A biopsy is a threshold. You are moving from “what if” to “what is.” Even in uncertainty, that movement matters. You are not alone in this.
Welcome to the other side—brought to you soon by a pathology report.