The Ugly Cancer Monster Rears It's Nasty Head

About two months ago, right after school/work let out, as I was getting out of the shower, I felt a hard area on my breast. I thought it was strange, but since I was expecting my period in a few days, and I knew that you weren't supposed to do self breast exams right before your period, I told myself I'd wait to see if it changed in the next few days. It wasn't a lump, per se, like most people say they feel when they find cancer. It was just a large, dense area taking up about a quarter of my lower, right breast. I waited.

A day or two after my period ended and the area hadn't changed at all, I called my ObGyn. They scheduled me to come in the following day. The nurse practitioner checked me out and wrote up an order to have a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound. I called and the soonest I could schedule the mammogram was a week later. This was Tuesday, June 21st. We were leaving for three weeks in California on that Saturday, the 25th.

On the 21st I had the mammogram done and they wanted to do an ultrasound as well. During the ultrasound, the technician said it was very difficult to tell if she could see anything. She asked if the radiologist could come in. He did. They both looked at my breast, and the image. The felt the area manually and looked at the image with the ultrasound. The radiologist said it was difficult to tell so, with my family history in mind, he suggested I get an MRI. He said he'd send the ultrasound results to my ObGyn and she could order the MRI.

The following day, the 22nd, I called the ObGyn office. They hadn't received the reports from mammography. I called mammography and they said they had sent the report but they would send it again. I let it go figuring my Ob would call.

On Thurs., the 23rd, I still hadn't heard so I called the Ob office again. They claimed they still hadn't received a report from mammography, so I told them to call and straighten it out themselves because when I called, they said they'd sent it over. Didn't hear anything Friday.

Saturday, June 25th we left for California. On Monday the 27th we headed up to my parents vacation house in Meadow Valley where I didn't have cell phone reception. We did have a land line, but since I hadn't heard back, and since I had made both offices aware that I was leaving for vacation and would have liked to have had the MRI before I left, I figured, it would have to wait.

After a nice week in the mountains, we returned on Friday, July 1st and I had seven frantic messages from nurses in the Ob office. The office was closed, so I called Sat. morning. No one was there. I left a message. Sunday passed, Monday was the Fourth of July and Tuesday morning, I finally reached the nurse. She asked me what the ultrasound tech. had told me. I told her that all they said to me was that it was hard to tell and I should get an MRI. The nurse told me that according to the report, they said I had a "cancerous growth". The nurse said she was going to schedule me for an appointment with a breast surgeon for as soon as I returned home. I hung up the phone and went with all my family to take family portraits at a local park. Smile!

So, I spent the next two weeks of my vacation trying not to worry. My mom, who is a breast cancer survivor, told me the surgeon would probably do a biopsy and until we knew for sure, we should not worry. During that time the appointment was made for the day after we returned, Monday, July 18th. No one knew but my parents and my husband.

On the 18th, the breast surgeon looked at the mass via ultrasound and did an ultrasound core biopsy to remove some of the tissue in the area. She sent the tissue to pathology for testing and said she should have results in two to three days. In the meantime, we scheduled a breast MRI for Saturday. Those days were horrible. I felt nauseated most of the time waiting for the phone to ring, wanting to know and not wanting to know at the same time. It didn't help that the weather was hot with heat indexes in the 100s. When I didn't get the call on Wed., I knew the call would come on Thursday. It took hours to fall asleep Wed. night with all the thoughts that were racing through my head. I had spent a few hours researching on the internet and am pretty convinced that they type I have is called Invasive Lobular Carcinoma, simply because it was the only type that matched my symptoms - not a small, hard lump, but a broad, dense mass. We shall see if my diagnosis matches the doctor's. That night I became resigned to the idea that I did, in fact, have cancer.

Thursday I was a ball of nerves. At 6:30 p.m. the surgeon called. It was cancer. She didn't tell me a type or a stage. She said to go ahead with the MRI and we would meet in her office again on Tuesday the 26th to discuss options, oncologists, etc. I hung up and it felt surreal. I am 42 years old and I have cancer. How would I tell my boys? They will be devastated. Beni and I have decided to wait until Tuesday until we have more information to give them.

Now we just wait until next Tuesday when we get more concrete information like type, stage, treatment options, etc. I will keep you posted. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.