My Diagnosis

Tickled by an angel...sounds weird but that's what it felt like. I had an itch on the inside of my breast toward the center of my chest that felt like someone tickled me with a feather and that's when I found the lump. Since I was still nursing Evelyn it would make sense that it had something to so with an inflamed duct or something, but that hurts and this didn't. I immediately told Nate and then called the doctor to make an appointment.

At the appointment she assured me I shouldn't worry because you can have other weird things that aren't breast cancer and most lumps aren't cancer anyway...but she sent me for the sono to be sure. From the sono the doc wanted a mammogram and from there a biopsy was recommended. I still wasn't really worried, I knew that they had to rule it out. At the biospy the doc acted like it probably wasn't cancer.

A week passed and I still hadn't heard so I decided to call so they could just tell me that it was fine. I didn't get the answer that I thought. My doc was out of town so her Physician's Assistant told me that it was moderately differentiated invasive ductal carcinoma. She also said it was estrogen receptor positive (estrogen feeds it) and HR/neu positive (a protein that our body produces feeds a gene in the cancer). The good news is that it is treatable. The bad news is that it is aggressive cancer and that the younger you are the more aggressive it tends to be so they treat it aggressively. My main tumor is a hair less than 2cm and they usually metastasize when they are larger than 2cm so we are praying that we have caught it just in time!

I was hoping that they could just cut it out, but I had other calcifications (small calcium deposits in the tissue that could be cancerous) that needed to be biopsied. So I had those biopsied as well and they were cancer also, but not invasive. They can become invasive so I knew that I had to have a mastectomy.

I am opting for a bilateral mastectomy  with reconstruction. My chances of getting cancer in the other breast are .8% per year maxed out at 15% without the bilateral so I wanted to reduce my risk as much as possible since I am only 30. During the surgery the doctor with do a sentinel lymph node biopsy. They inject a dye before surgery that goes to the first lymph node and they do the pathology right there to see if it has cancer and if it is there, they take out 20 more, and that is how they stage the cancer, so I won't know the stage until after surgery.

I am certain with all the prayer and good care I am receiving Things are going to be fine! I really am at peace about all of this and am focusing on growing my faith muscles and not taking anything for granted. I tend to be a positive person so although this was definitely unexpected I am just going to jump through all of these hoops the next year and get this over with!