I am a sharer. I talk and I tell but since I got the bad news about the shadow I have not shared my concerns because I had hoped it would be nothing like 80% of the cases are. Go with the majority, I figured. This time I was in the minority. So I told a few people, then a few more, now I am sharing with a lot more. Why?
For one, I feel like I am the poster adult for annual mammograms. If I hadn’t gone to the same place before so they could compare, the small shadow might have been missed. So if any women haven’t made their annual appointments yet, stop reading and do it NOW.
Also, when I was eight years old, my maternal grandmother had breast cancer when no one discussed (shhh) cancer. It wasn’t mentioned and when my mother explained why my grandmother was so sick and I told my big mouth 9 year old cousin who then told her mother, I got in trouble for telling her since her mother told my mother. Of course, I never told that cousin anything ever again. So now when I have breast cancer, I want to be open and discuss it. It’s a disease, not a curse or something I am ashamed of. I am open to talking about it and getting rid of it asap!!
How do I decide which surgeon to use? I have no idea. I send out emails to all the women I know who have had breast cancer. unfortunately there are many. I contact the doctors I know in the area and ask their opinions. I look online. There is a lot of information to go through and lots of good wishes to hear.
I decide to make an appointment with Dr. Dahlia Sataloff at Pennsylvania Hospital. Problem is, her first appointment isn’t until May 22. She wants all my information from Jefferson Hospital, including the actual slides, sent to her office. I get all the fax numbers and request everything. The people at Jefferson are so nice and helpful. The people at her office are also so nice but meanwhile, I am in La La Land waiting until June 22!!! It is very difficult knowing that the disease is inside of me and I am doing nothing.
I also make an appointment with Dr. Brian Czerniecki at Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine’s Rena Rowan Breast Center for a second opinion on July 3.
One of these doctors will be my surgeon.
How five days can seem like a century!! I got the biopsy on Wednesday, May 30 at the Jefferson-Honickman Breast Imaging Center. A very pregnant Dr. Whittaker, fellow in Radiology did the procedure. I watched the whole thing on the ultrasound as she put the needle into my breast and saw the shadow magnified greatly. The image was not always clear, it squished around a lot, she explained, as breast tissue does. Once the Lidocaine got in and numbed the area, all I felt was pressure. When the biopsy was happening, I felt the humming as the needle shook and snipped off the specimen. That was weird!!
The medicine made me feel sick after. I was shaking and my blood sugar plummeted. I need orange juice and graham crackers to get back to normal. After a while I felt fine. With directions in hand, I left Jefferson with a numb breast and the expectation of hearing from them by Tuesday.
On Monday, I was at my exercising when my cell phone rang and lit up RESTRICTED. I told Dwayne, my trainer, I had to take it. He knew why. I got the report that some of my cells were abnormal. Gee, I thought, abnormal isn’t so bad!
Then came the diagnosis- Invasive Lobular Carcinoma. I don’t like the words “invasive” or “carcinoma”!! The good news was that the mass was only one centimeter. Next step, Dr. Whittaker said, was to make an appointment with a breast surgeon.
After I shed a few tears, I dried my eyes and came back to finish my strength exercises. I told Dwayne, I better finish because I needed to be as strong as possible!!
Last year when I made the appoint for my annual mammogram on May 25, it had to be at 8:30 AM because they only allow a few slots for regular mammograms at the Jefferson-Honickman Breast Imaging Center where I have been going for 29 years. Since I am not a morning person, I was not thrilled with the time, but I thought I would be happy to get the ordeal done and over with since the last feel mammograms had be dicey with take-overs and further testing- ultrasounds included. Once, i could see an obvious white spot the size of a nickle that scared me to death. it turned out to be a series of calcification that when compressed, looked like a mass, but were scattered around the breast and were nothing when looked at from another angle!!
This year, I was still waiting at 10:30 AM for another test to check on a shadow on my right breast that the radiologist did not like and wanted to check it out again on an ultrasound. At noon I got the ultrasound and could tell something was up because of how it was done. The technician spent a tremendous amount of time around my armpits and said the radiologist might come in which had never happened before. All the technicians are supportive and so nice.
Around noon Dr. Tara Eisenberg, radiologist, came in to tell me that they found a shadow on my breast that wasn’t there before and that needs to be biopsied. They gave me the number to call and a technician came in to help me make the call.I was stunned. So stunned that, when I made the appointment, I made it for 10 days later because I was “busy” until then! it wasn’t until I was in the car on the way home that I realized I was busy with lunch dates with friends that I could cancel and I needed to take care of this immediately!! I called and rescheduled the biopsy for their first available date- May 30.
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