Sitting in the room waiting for the nurse to come back and tell me if I had something to be worried about or not seemed to take forever. I think in reality it was 10 minutes but it felt like hours. When she did knock and open the door she said, “We can feel the lump but nothing is showing on the mammogram, so we want you to do an ultrasound”. The hospital had an ultrasound in the next room so my husband and I walked into there and the tech came in. As I have said before, I like to know what is happening so I watched the screen to see what they were seeing.
I know from my husband’s cancer the year before a black spot on an ultrasound is not a good thing. I saw it right away and from the look on my husband’s face so did he. The tech said she had to get the doctor to come in and review it. It was not what she said but, what she did not say that was bothering me. In comes the doctor and he starts the exam over and says, “Well there is something there but, given your age and no family history it is probably a cyst”. Well I was not really feeling good about the “probably”. He suggested I contact a surgeon to have them look at the films and possibly do a needle biopsy.
Seeing as I had a surgeon that took my appendix out earlier the month who also was a breast surgeon I went to his office with my films. Unfortunately he was on vacation for the Christmas holiday but his nurse gave me a referral list. I sat in the hospital parking lot calling doctors until I found one that could see me right away.
The next morning on December 28th, 2005 I met my surgeon. Again I heard “Oh its probably nothing but a cyst you are too young”. I am so sick of hearing I am too young to be going through this. This gives a false sense of security that the patient would not be diagnosed with breast cancer. He wanted to take it out because of the size but he was sure it was not cancer. We set the appointment for the next day December 29th. I know it seems quick, but if there is even a small chance it was cancer did I want to leave it in my body any longer than I needed too? The doctor said that if they took it out I would not get results for about a week.
I went home and started searching the web so I could see what I should expect. Luckily I did, I found that the doctors can do what is called a frozen biopsy while in the operating room and would know right away if it was cancer. They would not know the stage or type but they would know it was cancer. I called my surgeon that night and told him I wanted the frozen biopsy and he actually tried talking me out of it. I don’t know if he was just so convinced that it was a cyst and that the frozen biopsy was a waste of money or what. It was my body and I made it perfectly clear he either agreed to that or he was not operating in the morning.
The next day I did have the outpatient surgery. My husband came with me but I asked my mom and sister not to take the day out of work because it was probably nothing.
When I was coming out of anesthesia I saw my mom and sister walking towards the room. I knew right then and there that the news was not good.