10am. That was the time we had our appointment with Mr M. I was told I was allowed to bring someone with me. That reiterated to me that the news wasn't going to be good.
Mr M and the breast care nurse were waiting for us. He delivered the news pretty quickly into our appointment and also very gently. It was breast cancer. Boom. There is was. All official and no longer a worrying 'what if'. He said lots of things but all I was hearing was "blah blah cancer blah blah tumour blah blah chemo blah blah surgery". I looked over at the hubby who was in total control mode and scribbling everything Mr M was saying in his notebook. I was told that the oncologist wanted me to have a PET scan and a CT scan to see if the cancer had spread anywhere else. It was that moment that I felt like shouting "NO! It's just breast cancer. I didn't sign up for it being anywhere else!" but obviously I didn't. I just nodded my head and half smiled, pretending I was understanding everything and taking it all in. Whilst really all I was thinking of was my boys and how I couldn't leave them without a Mummy. I was asked if I had any questions. I had thousands, but I just couldn't think of a single one to ask.
We then went and had some time with the breast care nurse (after some ugly crying that involved snot) and I was given a bag full of books and leaflets to read. She also gave us a book to read on how to talk to your children about cancer. Holy shit, how do you tell a 9 and a 6 year old that Mummy has cancer. I don't even know if they have ever heard the word cancer.
We pull ourselves together a bit and left the hospital. Hubby asks what I want to do or where I want to go. Any normal person would say home. Me, I say I want lunch. Good old emotional eater here. Plus, for some reason I felt like I didn't want to go home. It felt like an anti-climax after the news we'd just received. So for the time it took me to eat poached eggs and smashed avocado on toast, I felt fine. Then we went home. We cried. We talked. We even laughed when the Hubby mentioned I'd always wanted a breast reduction anyway. There's a silver lining in every cloud if you look for it 
The following day we were both off work and had a lovely family day out. Later that evening we sat and talked to the boys about my cancer. They took it really well, they even found it funny that the medicine will probably make Mummy go bald. We decided that we would be as honest with them as we could. Time will tell if we made the right decision.
