I will never forget the day I found my tumor. We were 5 weeks into the California Shelter in Place order and so my husband and I like many others were fixing up our backyard to better enjoy being stuck at home. We were spending more evenings outside planning it out and inevitably I was getting eaten up by mosquitos.
April 23rd I was sitting at my kitchen table my new makeshift desk since the pandemic had us all working form home. Lucky me I had a mosquito bite just under my left collar bone, I just finished scratching the itch and my fingers happen to linger and slide down to the top of my chest, it was then my little finger felt something lumpy. I thought maybe I had a different type of bug bite at first. My immediate reaction was to palpate it. It was definitely not a bug bite. I knew that sometimes during a woman’s cycle these types of things happen I made the decision to wait until after my cycle had finished to see if it was still there. So that’s what I did. I gave it several days and when it was the exact same size, when no matter the position I was I could find easily and in the exact same spot, I started to think maybe this is something and so I called my OB-GYN to get an appt.
I had my tele-health appt on May 5, 2020. It was with my OB/GYN. The questions she asked and the very decisive way in which she ordered not just a mammogram but an ultrasound sent my mind racing. I immediately google searched ultrasound with mammogram and why order them together. I read almost every single link on the first 3 pages of the search results. I needed to know if there was something in ultrasound that would say whether it was C word or not. I needed to know what questions to ask, I needed to know what the next step would be if it was the C word. I wanted to scream, I wanted to yell “STOP” to my life. I wanted it to be a bad dream, I wanted the voice that told me to brace for impact to shut the F up!!!!
Me being me and taking everything in life head on I immediately reached out to the imaging center my doctor spoke about and asked to get scheduled ASAP. I am not sure why the woman on the other end was so kind but she was. She got me in 3 days later. Friday May 8th from my research it knew that if it was just a cyst they would be able to tell via the ultrasound and that was the best outcome and so even though I was telling myself that was what I was wishing for I knew it wasn’t what I was going to get. I was right, the mammogram was a blur and the ultrasound was what I was impatient to get to. I was in the ultrasound room. The technician was cold. Not warm, not talkative. She didn’t even make eye contact. Looking back I don’t blame her. How many times was she stuck being the one to see the tumors to know that she was unable to give the patients the scans they were hoping for. Not making eye contact, not making small talk made me easier to forget and easier for her to do her job over and over again. She literally said nothing to me during my scan. Finally it was over and she told me I could wipe off and get dressed and that she would be back.
The next thing I know the radiologist came in and handed me a packet and said this will help guide you through the next steps, We cannot rule out malignancy due to the imagery on the scan. Woah, woah woah… WTF is happening here??? I had done my research and had a bagillion questions I wrote down and rehearsed but only one managed to make it out of my mouth. I knew this was the only one that mattered at the moment so I asked it, as bravely and through tears of fear… “In your professional opinion what are the chances of this being benign?” His answer was not what I wanted to hear but what I think I knew all along. I had a .01% chance of it being benign. The rest of the day was a blur and I didn’t sleep well or eat well until the biopsy results came back..
The results were as I had braced it was cancer. Aggressive, HER2+ and lymph nodes were involved. My life was forever changed that day but I’m stronger for it.