Finding The Lump

At my very first Pap smear appointment at 14, I was told I had very dense breasts and the nurse advised me to be diligent about my breast exams. She said “learn them, map them and you’ll never have an issue.”

Since that time I have always been diligent about performing my self breast exams before and after my menstrual cycle. So you can imagine my surprise when in the shower a week after a fabulous vacation in Vegas, I was doing a self breast exam and found a massive lump at the top of the inside of my left breast. It was so large you could see it and when you pressed down on my breast, you could feel the tough, gnarled feeling of a tumor that shouldn’t be there.

I was in the shower and just finished washing my body and the conditioner was still in my hair soaking. When I touched it I immediately knew, it was not supposed to be there and it was dangerous. I tried washing myself again hoping that it would help somehow.

I got dressed and got ready to go to work. It was a Saturday morning and I had just dropped my boys off with their dad. When I told Steve, we immediately started doing research, and obviously came up with things like calcifications, benign findings etc. I knew I had to go to the doctor but I also knew that I had no insurance.

I called and made an appointment at Planned Parenthood. I told them my age, my birthdate and why I was calling. I was given an appointment on August 31. 30 days from then. I believe this is a result of me not expressing how urgent I felt the situation really was.

As the week progressed my hand kept absentmindedly rubbing the same spot where the lump was at. It was top of mind always and it wasn’t stopping. I did a walk-in to Planned Parenthood to get my lump seen, three weeks before my Scheduled appointment. 

I was one of the first to be seen that morning. I had seen this particular nurse practitioner before. When she began the exam and her fingers touched the lump, she immediately said we need to refer you out to get a mammogram. There was no hesitation in her voice. And I believe it confirmed what we already knew to be true.

My mammogram was scheduled for later that week and an ultrasound of my left breast. The doctor at the imaging facility was amazing. He showed me the mammogram images of both of my breasts. And then explain to me the difference between my right breast which was normal, and my left which appeared to have small stars lighting up my breast, kind of like a night sky. Except ….. all the stars were calcifications and they weren’t supposed to be there. He said he would not expect a woman of my age to have calcifications like that in my breast. He wanted to do a biopsy and that my referring physician had already authorized for one to be performed if they found a probable cause. (THANK YOU!)

I made the appointment for the following week and I went and sat on the lawn outside of the imaging facility and called my mom. I told her what the doctor had said and I told her it wasn’t fair and I was scared.

The next few days were spent in agony, going up and down up and down with possibilities, and the potentials, and worries which never does anyone any good. 

The biopsy was done in the morning before I had to go to work. I remember as the biopsy was being performed, the doctor had a hard time getting the biopsy needle into the actual tumor because it was so tough. I had tears rolling down my cheeks as it was being completed. I got an ice pack and took some Motrin, and drove to the office. Just trying to maintain normalcy, that was my anchor.