July 21, 2010

On Saturday night (July 17), my husband discovered a lump on my left breast. (He says, "God made boobs appealing to men so women will get regular breast exams, because women won’t do them."  And he’s right; I haven’t been doing self exams. And, worse, with all that getting the flower shop up and running has entailed over the past two years, I skipped my mammo last year, so it's been two years.

If Al hadn't been in my life, and if his mother hadn't died of breast cancer 45 years ago, I may have waited to act on this.  I mean, there's no history of breast cancer, or any cancer for that matter, in our family.  I've always been extremely health, as was my mother.  I'm 57, and have never had a serious health problem.  My first thought was, "It couldn't be."  Thinking it must be just cartiledge or something, I checked for a match on the other side.  Nope.  So, knowing how troubling this must be for my husband, my plan was to get in to the doctor, have him rule out any problem, and thus put my Al's mind at ease.

So, I called my clinic on the next business day (Monday, July 19) and was able to get an appointment for yesterday (Tuesday, July 20). I went from an exam at my doctor’s office, directly to Ridgeview Medical Center in Waconia for a mammogram, followed by an ultrasound in the room next door, followed by a biopsy – all in about 3 hours. The radiologist promised to call by mid-day today with the results, which he did.

So the bad news is that it IS breast cancer. BUT the good news is …

• We found it relatively early, and it’s not real big. At the hospital yesterday, the radiologist (Dr. Gross) guessed that the mass was about 1” in diameter. He now says it’s more like ¾,” and it’s surrounded by some scar tissue and fibrosis, so the actual cancer is even somewhat smaller than that.
• On a scale of 1-3, Dr. Gross has graded it a 2, based on looking at the nucleus and measuring the activity of cell replication. It’s not an extremely quickly spreading type (3), but it’s also not just sitting there (1).
• He’s going to inform my regular doctor, and also have a surgical nurse from Ridgeview Medical Center (where all the diagnostics were done yesterday) call me later today to discuss the next steps, so I guess I’ll know more later.
• He says he does not consider it an emergency. If I were to tell him I have vacation plans booked for 3 weeks from now, and I’d like to take care of it after that, he said that would be fine. But because I don’t, and nothing in my life is more important right now than getting this behind me, there’s no point in delaying.
• He’ll let the surgeons lay out the plan, but based on his experience, he believes it will involve a lumpectomy followed by radiation, and we’ll be looking at this thing in the rear view mirror in the not too distant future.

I’m fine, and extremely optimistic. Surprisingly, Al seems to be fine, too, considering that the traum of losing his mother to breast cancer when he was 10 years old was the greatest trauma of his life, so I think he’s being a trooper with this news. Medical advances being what they are, even in the last 12 months, I think we’ll get through this just fine. But prayers are always welcome.

So, ladies, do your breast self-exams!