OH CRAP! I HAVE CANCER

OH CRAP! I HAVE CANCER.

This is being written a bit backwards. It is the first of August, and I am 2 weeks past my first chemotherapy treatment. Much has happened since the day I found my lump. It the same as finding a lump of coal in the Christmas stocking at the end of a year when you thought you had been so good and was expecting something new and shiny for the holidays.

On the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, I was soaping myself up, (no this is not a porno blog, I was just getting clean) and I felt a large lump in the lower part of my right breast. I finished my shower and felt for it again to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. I realized it had been a year and a half since my last mammogram, so I was a bit concerned.

I had to work that day, and I was running a bit early. My GYN is almost around the block from me. I don’t remember thinking to go over there, I just did.  I told them I felt something and they gave me an immediate script to get a mammogram. And off I went to work.

I was not surprised to get an appointment that afternoon. Who goes for a mammogram on the Friday before Memorial Day, so there was time for me. I told my boss I had to leave early as I needed ‘an emergency mammogram’ she nodded and said OK as she was used to me and a bit of my craziness. Who needs an emergency mammogram on a Friday?  So I left early.

I went to Scottsdale Medical Imaging…SMIL as they call themselves. I let them smoosh my breasts into the machine and take pictures. It was soon over and they said they would be taking a sonogram of my breasts. I said please do not take any tests that I don’t need.  The nurse then took me by the arm into a small darkened room where a bald dr. somebody in heavy glasses sat me down and showed me something that looked liked aliens inside my breast. They were long tubular structures with a scattered top. He said these are not good. You need to have a sonogram. I agreed as even to my untrained eye, they didn’t look like they should be there.  I then had the sonogram, much easier than the ever joked about mammogram.

Again I was lead into the dark room and shown the films with my personal aliens. The doctor was shaking his head. I hopefully offered up cysts, bruises, and benign tumors, anything that did not begin with a C. I was told to schedule a biopsy, and soon.

Oh, and have a happy holiday.