A week and a half before that fateful phone call, I’d been for a routine mammogram. I’d been experiencing some breast pain, especially in the left breast, but my GP said it was probably hormonal as breast cancer rarely caused pain. Besides I hadn’t felt any lumps or anything sinister. The radiographer on the day recommended taking evening primrose oil and I went home relieved my mammogram was over for another 3 years.
A week or so later I received that phone call from the breast clinic asking me to come in. There was something concerning on my mammogram that needed investigating, So, the next day I turned up at the hospital sure it was just an error of the scanning process or some scarring from a previous breast infection. It was all a whirl - ultrasounds, a CT scan, biopsies… When they lead me into an office and offered me a cup of tea, I knew there was bad news. Not that they weren’t nice before, but there was an edge of sympathy to their body language and expressions, an excess of courtesy which rang alarm bells for me.
They told me they were 90% sure I had a cancerous tumour in my left breast. But I had to wait 2 weeks for the path lab to confirm and say which type etc. I was numb, still laughing and joking, my brain not really getting the message that this was life changing news. I reassured myself that breast cancer was very treatable and compared myself to my neighbour who’d been through it 2 years before. She was fine, I told myself, and I would be too. I wasn’t scared, or worried, or feeling anything at all. I don’t think it was real to me. Cancer is what happens to other people.
Two weeks later, when the pathology results came back they told me I had a 2.7cm invasive breast cancer tumour in my left breast. The plan was to remove it in a lumpectomy aka ‘Wide Local Excision’, remove the 5th and 6th sentinel lymph nodes from my under arm for testing - since that’s the route cancer usually takes to escape the breast, and then a course of radiotherapy to reduce the risk of it coming back. Then I’d be on a drug to block my oestrogen for 5 years. The tumour was a slow growing one and hormone sensitive so that was all good. I was booked for surgery in August.
All very simple, straight forwards and quick. I reckoned it’d all be over in a few weeks.
