Diagnosis
I called the Women's Center later that afternoon - when my head was on more straight. Mike was home with me. He had left work shortly after I got there and dropped the news. With both of us home, and another pair of ears - I asked Sue to tell me the results again. She said what I have is "Infiltrating Ductal Carcinoma." The tumor has a grade of 2 right now. On a scale of 1 to 3, 3 is the most aggressive for a tumor. Evidently I'm right in the middle. It's about 1.5" in size overall. And you can see it.
When we were on our honeymoon - Mike so nicely pushed me into the "Macarena" line on the snorkel cruise we were on. We were on our way back to the marina in Cabo San Lucas when the guys on the yacht began their "show." Mike was snapping pictures as I was thoroughly embarrassed, but I went with it and had fun. As we looked back through the pictures he took, we noticed the lump that we knew was there. This was the first time that it was captured on film.
If you look close, I put a red rectangle over the lump. I found it for the first time in December 2009. I thought it would go away on its own. I've had one other mass that turned out to be fluid filled, and after 3 months, it had disappeared on its own. No such luck with this one. After this picture, I knew I needed to go to the doctor and get it checked out. At my appointment, my doctor initally thought that it was going to just be a cyst like the previous one. He said "We'll treat you like you're not 29 and get the proper tests ordered." From there it was downhill, an ultrasound that turned into a mammogram, that turned into "You need to go in for a biopsy" to "you have breast cancer."
When we were on our honeymoon - Mike so nicely pushed me into the "Macarena" line on the snorkel cruise we were on. We were on our way back to the marina in Cabo San Lucas when the guys on the yacht began their "show." Mike was snapping pictures as I was thoroughly embarrassed, but I went with it and had fun. As we looked back through the pictures he took, we noticed the lump that we knew was there. This was the first time that it was captured on film.
If you look close, I put a red rectangle over the lump. I found it for the first time in December 2009. I thought it would go away on its own. I've had one other mass that turned out to be fluid filled, and after 3 months, it had disappeared on its own. No such luck with this one. After this picture, I knew I needed to go to the doctor and get it checked out. At my appointment, my doctor initally thought that it was going to just be a cyst like the previous one. He said "We'll treat you like you're not 29 and get the proper tests ordered." From there it was downhill, an ultrasound that turned into a mammogram, that turned into "You need to go in for a biopsy" to "you have breast cancer."
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. ~Eleanor Roosevelt
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