Biopsy

Not a word I hoped ever to write again as a part of my current experience.

But Friday afternoon I had a biopsy. Actually two. On my right breast.

A week ago I  had my annual mammogram basically just to check it off the list of requirements for the Denver clinic in preparation for our future FET.

They did two mammo scans of the left breast. Two on the right. Then I went to sit in a back waiting room while the doctor looked at the films to be sure they were happy with them. The tech came out. More images were apparently needed on the right side. FIVE more images to be exact. Ugh. More imaging done. Then back to the chairs.

Then the radiologist came out and said that it all looked OK but they wanted to do an ultrasound on the right side anyway, because I'd reported some pain in that breast. So they did the ultrasound. I was actually calm up until that point, and even into the beginning of the scan. But as the sonographer was doing the scan, I could tell she was seeing something. I started to feel scared. I felt like I felt at age 27, when I was about to be diagnosed with lymphoma. I tried to talk myself out of how afraid I felt.

The radiologist came in and said that the ultrasound revealed two masses. "Don't worry," she said. "But these masses weren't there last year when you had your mammo and sonogram. We need to biopsy them just to be sure."

That was eight days ago. I've been trying not to think about it since then. It is what it is; why suffer in advance? If it's bad, I'll have plenty of time to freak out and re-collect myself. An adage I take from having cancer before.

So I successfully held off thinking about it much until today. And today I was busy supervising a trainee dealing with a patient's psychiatric emergency, so that took a lot of my attention. But when it came time for the biopsy, I was scared.

A different radiologist performed two core needle biopsies on my right breast: one mass at 1 o'clock and one at 6:30. Both of them were pretty deep inside the breast. The radiologist took 10 tissue samples in total. The procedures took awhile. It wasn't comfortable but not terrible either. One site bled. They said a hematoma was already forming as I laid there on the table (awesome). Now I just feel bruised and sore (The sites are bandaged so I can't tell anything about how they will look yet).

About halfway through the procedure I started shaking. I told the team I was cold, because I was in fact a little cold. But truly I think the shaking was my nerves. I have laid on too may tables and had too much bad news. Like there's some neural imprint of my past on me. After the biopsy they took three more images to visualize the titanium clips they'd placed in my breasts to mark the sites. Now that I'm at home in bed, my whole breast is achy and I've been wearing ice packs on it to numb it a bit and reduce swelling. The achiness makes it hard not to think about what might happen.

So now I wait. Results are expected back by Tuesday. I hate waiting for results. I hate imagining my tissue culturing in dishes in a lab, potentially yielding up negative information that could throw my life into a tailspin. I hate being afraid. I hate even the slight possibility that this could be cancer again.

Mo

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