The Drama Begins

So it all began with a little lump, found by my excellent gynecologist on my routine annual exam. We had been through this before, with lumps, since I have what they call "dense breast tissue", and have had cysts that come and go before; I had been down the road of looking into these lumps with ultrasound, and being told that it was just a benign cyst. I was good at getting my annual mammograms (especially since my mom was treated for breast cancer); the last one in August was normal.

So I thought that this was the same cyst thing. My doc gave me the paperwork at the time of the exam--for an early mammogram and an ultrasound. Put the papers on my desk, and....went about my life with no urgency or concern at all. It was probably about 6 weeks later that I realized that the lump was still there, and it hurt a little now and then. It hadn't gone away like the others. So I made a routine appointment, and went in for the tests just to get it out of the way, and put this thing to rest.

So off I went on May 24th; I had to keep getting "repeat" or different views on the mammogram; they must have squished me 7 or 8 times; then I got to the ultrasound. Now I can't read a breast ultrasound, but I know what cysts kind of look like. The technician was taking pictures of a whole lot of irregular cystic-type lesions, but the shapes didn't look quite right. When she left to have the radiologist look at the pictures, I heard myself saying "I don't have a good feeling about this...."

..and my gut was right again. The radiologist came in and asked to examine me....(yes..a radiologist!) In retrospect, he did this because there were clear abnormalities on the ultrasound, but nothing abnormal could be seen on the mammogram. He went on to tell me this, and that the irregular areas probably represented the spread of cancer to lymph nodes within the breast. He said that it would be extremely surprising to him if it WASN'T cancer, and that I needed a biopsy right away. I scheduled it for 2 days later.