Wednesday, June 11, 2008

By request

Someone who is a regular on my blog comment list has asked me to tell about how I found my cancer so here is the story...
One night in late December I was getting undressed and accidentally hit myself in the left breast and felt something that was not right. I investigated and found a lump. I tried to express from my nipple(I used to have a hormone imbalance that made me produce milk, long b4 I breastfed my son, so it was a knee jerk reaction to finding the lump).
I found I could express blood. Without a second going by I was on the internet looking up info about the blood and called my girlfriend in Chicago and called Tim. I can't recall which order I did this in, but this is what I did. Tim and I agreed that I would call the doctor ASAP in the morning.
After dropping Luke off I was about to call the doctor and Tim called and said "why don't you just go straight there" So, I went to the doctors office, burst into tears in the waiting room and got put into a room to wait until the doc arrived. An intern saw me, and then the doc. Everyone agreed it was likely a cyst, but the blood was a concern, so they scheduled an ultrasound( I am too young to have mammograms yet) It took all the way through Xmas until early Jan for me to get an ultrasound, and within 15 minutes of getting the ultrasound they had me into mammogram and biopsy.
4 (or more, I was pretty upset by this point) biopsies later I felt like I had been mauled by a tiger and got sent home to wait for a week until the following Friday.
A week later I had heard nothing so I assumed things were ok and had a great weekend.
On the Monday I had my appt with the doc for follow up and had to take Luke with me as he was ill. As soon as I saw my doctor's face in the waiting room I knew I was wrong about being ok. We left Luke in the waiting room and he told me that the biopsies were positive, there were 3 lumps in my left breast, and something in the lymph area. I cried and was totally shocked when he said mastectomy was the best option over lumpectomy, and after then a few minutes I composed myself and collected my son to go to Tim's house and tell him.
The rest of the story is pretty easy.... specialists, surgery, recovery and chemo...
I will likely write later today about this new chemo.
It is no more fun than the last, but I am awake more.
I am off to plant a few things in the garden b4 I have to go to work, which I am dreading today, as my back is really really sore all the time from the new chemo..

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Noelle,

Thanks you for sharing your history. I respect and admire your honesty, openess, and detail. I must admit that I am not that consistent with monthly self breast exams however, I have learned so much from your blogs that I will be more dilegent in this area. That is my promise to myself.
My concern is that I will not be able to detect anything early enough to make a difference. I was able to feel a silicone breast with different stages of breast cancer, but, I only felt the lump in the last stage!!
So, for anyone who is reading this, please let me know if you detected a lump by self examination and was it early enough?
Noelle, you are an inspiration, keep on blogging