Betrayal of the Ta-Ta's
I've always had a problem with the month of November. I call it my jinx month. It seems to wait for me most years with a reminder of my human frailty...a Grand Mal seizure, a freak accident that rips off half a thumbnail, a stumble that forces a faceplant on a city sidewalk (at the expense of a front tooth) or a slip at work that tears my MCL ligament and pulverizes a part of my knee bone.
This year the November jinx was on like Donkey Kong...and it truly took the prize (a booby prize...bad pun as you will see). Friday, November 1st I went in for my yearly Mammogram. I used to routinely get called back because of those effin' "dense breasts". A few years ago they switched to the 3D mammography process and the call backs stopped (since they could really see what was in there). So, imagine my surprise when I got a call to come back the following Tuesday. They did the followup and then asked me to stick around for an ultrasound. The red flags started popping up in my brain with a vengeance. After the ultrasound, the radiologist came in, asked if I was here with anyone. My husband had come with me and waited in the waiting room so they went to get him. I was NOT getting good vibes, to say the least. The radiologist explained that there were two areas "of concern" in my left breast. The upshot was he wanted me to have both areas biopsied. This was a new and definitely not welcome departure from past years. The earliest they could schedule me was this early December so we spent a month in limbo. Thanksgiving week with my daughter, son-in-law and new baby grandson was a bit of a distraction but I had a gut feeling that things were not going to go well.
The biopsy went well...the staff at the Breast Care Center was truly amazing and the Nurse Practitioner went above and beyond to put me at ease, showing me all the previous test results and assuring me that things would be ok. I prayed like a crazy woman for a benign diagnosis.
The results came with a call three days later. They weren't what we had been hoping for. Both sites were malignant (bad news) but were Stage 1 (early) and Grade 1 (slow-growing). But they have to come out asap! The options include Lumpectomy followed by radiation OR Mastectomy. The prognosis is excellent because of the early detection but it will make this Christmas a little different from past years, for sure.
Now, lest you think I am planning a pity party, nothing could be further from the truth. I am grateful for so much: the early detection and promising prognosis, the availability of excellent medical care, health insurance which will blunt the financial blow of the treatment substantially and most importantly, a boatload of support from friends and family, including a husband who will do anything to keep me around a lot longer. (He claims he can't do anything by himself...not ENTIRELY true!) We've been married for 43 years and he is extremely resistant to change.
I have a sister, Betsy, who is a Nurse Practitioner in another state. I called her immediately to get her take on the situation. She immediately said "Mastectomy...and if your insurance oks it have a double". She has seen many lumpectomies that resulted in reoccurrence and told me about a mutual friend who was in my situation and had a double mastectomy. When they examined the non-affected breast they found evidence of early cancer in that one too. Jennifer has been cancer-free for over ten years now, an outcome that would likely have been different had she not done the double. As she said, "At your age the girls have done their job and now they are just trying to kill you." I did laugh at that one!
So, now I await my appointment with the surgeon with much to think about and an unknown road ahead. I am confident the outcome will be a positive one but I would be less than truthful if I said I was facing it without a certain measure of fear and trepidation.
There is, however, one irrefutable lesson in all of this. MAMMOGRAMS SAVE LIVES! These malignancies did not show up a year ago on my mammogram and I shudder to think what might have happened if I had decided to skip a year, as some of my fellow 0ver-65 gal pals have discussed. It might have been too late.
According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation:
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