how i spent my summer vacation

Sometime near the end of April 2011 I reached up and felt a thickened area in my right breast. And a thickened ridge from my nipple to my armpit. For the next couple of weeks my brain (and everyone else) tried to decide that it was nothing but my guts said different (Oh guts, you rebels). My guts said THIS IS NOT GOOD.

So hilariously I made an appointment with my gynecologist for the week after my period because maybe this was just changes related to my menstrual cycle. Oh, but it wasn't. Not at all! It was changes related to cancer! The end. You can stop reading. Just kidding. Don't stop reading.

Anyway, back to my story. My gynecologist felt (and felt and felt and felt) my breast and then said it did indeed seem denser but that he did not feel a discernible nodule or mass. He decided I needed a mammogram and (if necessary) an ultrasound. Turns out, it was necessary. I remember thinking the ultrasound of my breast was the worst thing ever. Oh Wendy, just you wait! Staring at my breast tissue and watching the ultrasound tech measure stuff made me want to get up and run away. Or throw up. I also considered just passing out. I wanted to do whatever was most dramatic.

That afternoon my doctor's nurse called me and told me my doctor wanted to go over my mammogram report with me. I said "Is something wrong?" And because they never ever ever tell you anything, she just said "he just wants to make some recommendations." So, I felt very very nervous because my guts were saying "this is not okay" and my head was telling me 'he's just going to recommend you lay off the milkshakes.'

So I went in the next afternoon because for some reason when someone has something crappy they would like to tell you they should do it a full 24 hours later just in case you haven't had time to google every horrible thing you've ever known about anything.

My doctor said something about tissue changes and calcifications and the only words I could read upside down on his little report from the radiologists were "solid mass." So, he said I'd have to have a biopsy and that those were lots of fun and when it was over I would receive a new set of knives. I just made that up, the part about the knives. He did say I would have to have a biopsy and that I would have to go to a surgeon.

So, my husband and I stumbled out to the nurse's desk and listened to her to say "HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS" to people on the phone clearly just to see if she could make me faint right there on the spot. I DIDN'T. But I did sit down because all of the sudden my head felt like a washing machine. From that point on my husband did all the talking and scheduling of things because I was now officially mute. The nurse came around the counter and hugged me and that actually made me feel worse. Pretty sure that wasn't her intention though. But my mind was racing with one thought. Just one: Please let me see my children grow up.


tired of typing now. to be continued (but probably not. at least not soon. but someday maybe.)