Finding out
On the 8th December I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Like anyone who hears these words, your word and all that you knew and thought about your furture comes tumbling down around you. Most upsetting is seeing my family upset. It is terrible to find out that something has been growing inside you and spreading throughout your body and that you have no knowledge of it at all.
I spent most of 2011 raising my baby girl who was born in December '10. It was a tummultuous year to say the least and I just felt that I was really coming to grips with motherhood. I was down to one feed in the evening and our little girl it just the sweetest thing on this earth. She is loved so much and by so many people.
When my milk supply dropped off I felt a lump in the upper outer part of my left breast. In the back of my mind I hoped that it was a blocked duct of some blockage from the residual milk from feeding my DD (dear daughter). I visited the GP who was not concerned and felt that it was "ropey" and moveable. This explanation seemed rational to me so away I went. A month or so later I felt another small pea like lump right next to this larger one and again my concern grew. Being in the industry I work, radiation therapy, I wasn't ok with just letting this go. So off I went for an unltrasound.
That was one of the scariest days and something I really should not have done on my own. From that day things were never the same. I was sent for US guided biopsies of the 2 lumps, mammograms and more US of both breasts. Again I made the mistake of going to those appointments on my own. I was a complete wreck in the waiting room. Facing looks that basically spelt out "these are suspicious lesions". My heart and word were breaking apart. I got home to my mum, waiting with my dd and just fell apart.
It was an agonising wait to see the breast surgeon the next day. To tell my husband and I that I had breast cancer. That both lumps were positive for ductal carcinoma and that they had also found some cancer cells in the FNA they took from a node in my arm pit.
From that day the rollercoaster of the last month and a half began...
