My visit with the breast surgeon

July 9

I had my appt. with Dr. Canavan. She was the one who did my biopsy last year, and I really like her. She's no nonsense. She's thorough and caring. She looked at my mammogram and ultrasound, and read the report, which mentioned perhaps a history of a trauma to the left breast. She asked me if I remembered being hit there, like elbowed or something, in the past. I couldn't remember anything like that. She did not seem concerned with the discharge from the right side, and said that happens to a lot of women. Hmm. But she looked at the mass on my left side, and noticed there was shadowing. This was concerning to her. She also saw the enlarged lymph nodes, and asked if I would be willing to do a biopsy of both right then and there. I agreed, because I wanted to get to the bottom of it. The week prior to this visit, McKay and I did exhaustive searches on the web. 80% of lumps turn out to be benign or nothing more than harmless cysts or fibrous tissue. So this was going to be fine, right? Well, she could tell I was edgy, and I told her that I hadn't slept well over the last week. She asked if I'd like a prescription for a sleeping pill, and I thought that would be fine. We went into another room, where she was able to pinpoint the mass with an ultrasound, and then took a needle to the right spot to biopsy it. She took several tissue samples, and then she went to one of the swollen lymph nodes, and did a "fine needle aspiration", which was sucking out some fluid from the node with a very fine needle. She took about 20 samples from there. She told me we'd probably have results by Friday, Monday at the latest. Maybe it was the look on my face, but she could tell that wouldn't be soon enough. She had her nurse check to see if there was still a courier in the building so that the samples could go out that day and we'd have results the next day. That sounded good to me. I left the office pretty sober, and started bracing myself for the worst, but I also felt a peace in my heart, so I thought it couldn't possibly be cancer. I called McKay on my drive back home, and he asked me if I wanted him to be there when I got the results. I told him I would be fine, and I didn't think it was going to be bad news. He didn't need to come home early. That night, I had a hard time sleeping, but I was greatful that I would know by the next day.