In the beginning...

Tuesday was an 'interesting' day

A letter arrived in the mail. A recall from the breast squish crowd. They think they have spotted a lump. I feel my stomach clenching up as I read further. They are now going to get me back to find out what sort of a lump it is. 

Scary!

I am on time, even a little early, and rather nervous. Matt has come too. I leave him in the outer waiting room and change into a gown. I am ready but the machine isn't so I sit in the internal waiting room and do my patchwork whilst listening to technical types trying to get that machine to work.

Eventually, they come and say I should do the ultrasound first to speed up the process so I get taken to a room where they spread warm goo over the area in question and run the sensor over to see if they can spot the lump. They don't find anything and I begin to think it is a false alarm. So back I go to the waiting room. It is only a short time later that they get one of the machines going so I get to go on that. I spread myself on the plate and feel a little sorry for my poor flattened breast lying there all naked and exposed. Then I get a look at the results and there it is. A sparkling, tiny white lump in a swirl of blood vessels. Beautiful but deadly. The ultrasound was looking in the wrong place so back I go for more warm goo and this time the operator finds it.

Bugger!

Back to the waiting room and my patchwork. This time I get Matt from his waiting room where he was playing with his cell phone for the last three hours and we get given a small, private waiting room about the size of your average broom closet because men shouldn't be in the inner waiting room. I drank some water and Matt got himself a cup of tea. We needed that by now!

The next visitor was a very nice person who explained what was going to happen next. A biopsy was planned and was explained with care. It didn't sound very pleasant but I signed the form as they were keen to fit me in around lunchtime. They brought me a couple of painkillers with the sage words that they would help later on. Not very reassuring so back to the patchwork in an attempt to kill the waiting time.

I nearly finished my round of patchwork before being called again. This time, the room looked a bit more serious and the first nurse to come in gave my frontage a really good explore by hand. She said she could feel some thickening of the skin where the lump was but nothing in the lymph nodes in my armpit. After this I am spread out on a bed, padded up into position with pillows and the area concerned is painted pink. A local anasthetic follows – I am careful not to look. I think they could use some art work on the ceiling as looking at a water sprinkler nozzle gets boring fast.

The sample thing sounds a bit like a nail gun....

Four samples later it is done and they patch the hole. I get dressed and leave with a sheet of wound instructions and Matt, and a week to wait for results.

That seems like forever just now......