No one is prepared to hear those words. Cancer, it sneaks up on you out of nowhere, no side effects, not feeling ill, nothing...not until things are really, really bad anyhow. I've heard those words uttered twice in my life and both times took me by surprise and when you think of being told something of such importance...you don't envision it to be like it was told to me.
The first time:
I was 25 and had just gone to my regularly scheduled gynocological exam in January. My doctor felt a lump in my left breast at the 9 o'clock position. It was about 2 cm in size, but it's not like my breasts ever felt like pudding, they are lumpy in general. The doctor asked me how long that lump had been there and I shrugged it off like it was nothing and replied, "I think about July??" She said it would be best to have an ultrasound done in the event that it's cancer eventhough it's probably just a fibroadenoma, which is a more common benign tumor. This statement scared the crap out of me and I remember calling my mother and crying to her telling her what the doctor said to me. My mom reassured me and said the doctor is just taking precautions and she stated how fibrous breasts ran in our family and well, we have no history of breast cancer in our family.
There was no hurry for the ultrasound because it wasn't cancer, right? The radiology place got me an appointment in a month. I went in for this appointment to have an ultrasound done and there was definitly a mass there. They wanted a better picture of it, so they took a mammogram of it. That just confirmed that there was a tumor there, but it was still believed based on my age and family history lacking breast cancer that it was a benign tumor. The location of the tumor was also indicative that it was not cancerous. This is not how breast cancer typically presents itself. We decide to see a surgeon and have a biopsy done just to confirm.
Again, it's most likely benign, so no hurry to get in to see the surgeon. It's not me that is waiting, it's the medical offices that wave it off as if it's not important. It's another month before the surgeon can have a consultation with me, so the middle of february and I meet with him. He gives me my options and I decide that since it's most likely benign based on the information all the medical personnel have given me to do an ultrasound guided needle biopsy of the tumor. The surgery is scheduled in 2 weeks.
I go in for the surgery (if you can even call it that). They give me just local anesthetic and I get to watch the ultrasound on the screen, coolness! I walk out of there myself with only two tiny holes in my breast. The surgeon again states that the tissue he has removed looks like that of a benign tumor. Seriously, it looks like I was bitten by a vampire. No follow up consultation is scheduled...afterall, it's benign, right?
3 weeks pass by because at the lab, there are usually two pathologists, but one was on vacation. The process on a cancer diagnosis is that when one pathologist finds it a positive diagnosis that it goes in the pile of cases for the other pathologist to look at and confirm. And so it was found, two independent opinions that indeed the sample was invasive ductal carcinoma. My surgeon gets the word and must pass this data on to me, quickly.
He contacts me at work, where I'm a dental hygienist and I see patients all day long. All I remember from that conversation was the word cancer and come in thursday to discuss options. I hung up the phone and started crying and my coworkers gathered and hugged me. I told them what I THOUGHT I heard, but was I sure? Maybe he said Precancerous. I was unsure. I found out 2 days later that it was indeed cancer and surgery was to take place in 2 weeks and within those 2 weeks I met a counselor, a medical oncologist (Dr. Lee), and a radiation oncologist (Dr. Cheston). What a whirlwind.
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