Here is my story so far...I was having a pain in my left breast from the armpit to the lower side of my breast for about 6 weeks now. I was waiting to act on it because I wanted to go through a period and see if it was related. If it had been anywhere else on my body I would have ignored it frankly. We have a lot of BC on my mom's side of the family, but not my mom or sister. My mom has 8 sisters, of them, 4 have had BC (all prementalpausal) 2 have lost their battle, 1 has had a prophylactic double mastectomy just for her peace of mind, and 2 of those who have done they BRC testing have come back positive. So given the family thing I decided to use this as an excuse to get a complete physical since I hadn't had one in years.
Thank God for Nurse Reese. She is a NP, but she took my pain very seriously. Even though we both couldn't distinguish a specific lump, more of just a tender area in the midst of tendons and muscle, she gave me a full referral to a Breast Care Center nearby. She said it was time for my first mammogram. I had a mammogram (nothing showed up) but since I was having a symptom they decided to do an ultrasound. The first tech did the ultrasound and found nothing. Then the Dr. came in and asked me to point the probe at the specific tender spot. There if found a small "shadow" on the screen. It measured about .8 cm by 1.5 cm and did not have distinct borders. He began the day by saying, "In 30 years of doing this, I have never seen cancer present itself as just pain, I am sure this is nothing." (words that will make me question Drs. as long as I live.) They decided to biopsy it this week, Friday.
He called friday at 3:30 and said to his surprise it was cancerous. I started shaking and pulled out a pen and paper, because I knew I would not remember what he said. I told him to tell me the exact words I need to know. He called it an "Infiltrating Ductal Carcinoma" with a Grade 3 Histological Description. It is a combination of DCIS and IDC.
I told him we had a family trip to Disney World planned for a year & and a half, from July 8-21, could this wait until after? He said "no, you may not be going on that vacation" That hit me harder than the actual diagnosis. Plus, we are moving August 1-7 to a new house. I can't help thinking if I could have just waited two more months I could deal with this better. Frankly, that has been my biggest struggle right now.
As for today, I had a restless night sleep, kept waking up thinking about all my friends and family who were probably also still awake. Understandably my mom is taking this very hard and given her family's history, she is scared. My next step was to find my best cleavage shirt, pull my long brown hair down (that I almost always wear in a pony-tail) and resolve that if I was going to lose these things in the next few months, I was showing them off until then!
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