Fear, Relief, Gratitude, and Tequila

I’ve been dealing with an ongoing saga of the right breast since the first of the year. Thankfully all is well but my right boob has been poked, prodded, photographed, and felt up more times than I care to recall.

My pathology report says NEGATIVE FOR INVASIVE CARCINOMA. I may have it matted and framed.

I am a healthy 37-year-old woman with no history of breast cancer in my family. I take my health for granted.

The moral of the story is if you feel any type of abnormality in your breast, get it checked immediately. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do monthly breast self exams. Even if you do not have a history of family breast cancer, even if you are very healthy, even if you want to blow it off as nothing because you have dense breasts or a history of fibrocystic disease, like me, it could be something and the sooner it is detected the better.

Around the first of December I felt a pea-size lump next to an existing "innocent" fibrocystic mass I've had for years in my right breast. I wasn't concerned since it was small and since that breast is my "lumpy" one. I kept putting off my annual OBGYN appointment due to the holidays. I finally went in the first of January. My doctor also felt the questionable lump. He told me that it might not be anything but that it might be something cancerous and that I should go see a breast surgeon he recommended right away. Fear sets in.

The following week I saw the breast surgeon. The nurse examined me—an ultrasound exam on my breast. She said she wasn't concerned about it and when the surgeon did an exam he told me he felt 90 percent sure it was just fatty tissue. He gave me a handout sheet on fibrocystic disease and told me just to be on the precautionary side I needed to schedule my first mammogram. He seemed matter of fact and almost upbeat. Case closed, or so I thought. This guy sees thousands of boobs and he wasn't concerned.

I went to the mammogram appointment in February by myself as I had no reason to expect anything out of the ordinary. By then the small lump had actually disappeared. I put on a cloth gown that swallowed me like a California king size sheet. One of the other ladies in waiting went back to her changing room and gave me a small gown. Who knew I had grabbed the XXXL? We were all laughing and it was nice to have a diversion.

The mammogram itself was not bad at all but then instead of being sent on my merry way like all the other women, I was told they wanted to do another ultrasound of my right breast.