This time there seems to be a whole team of people seeing me. The young doctor who had cancelled his meeting is there, plus another older doctor who I later find out is the top man for MR Imaging at this hospital. There are three nurses and at least one other person behind the smoked glass of the control room.
The male nurse inserts the cannula for the dye into my arm and then the two female nurses take over. It is their job to literally strap me in for the scan. Face down again but this time they push and stretch and manhandle my left breast into a squeezing contraption that looks like it is made from two sides of a grey plastic milk crate. It holds my breast tightly but allows access through the square gaps.The older doctor comes in to administer the local anaesthetic and make the 'small nick in the skin' that will allow the instruments in for the vacuum assisted biopsy. I cannot see him as he is somewhere beneath me, I only know it is him by his voice. Is he kneeling on the floor to do this? It is all very odd, slightly humiliating and disorientating.
The first time in the scanner is to locate the area they want to biopsy. The second time is with some kind of instrument 'like a pen' inserted into my breast to 'point at' the part of the lesion that they need a sample of. Once they establish that it is indeed pointing at the right place, the pen is replaced by the instrument that takes the biopsy. This is a very strange procedure done by a machine that I cannot see. It feels as though there is a little insect buzzing around inside my breast making a tiny circular circuit with the noise of the machine clicking and wheezing away beside me.
Once I am released and lever myself up, on the base of the clamping device I see a small pool of blood and little pile of tissue that has leaked out of the incision. The doctor holds up the little plastic cage with the sample in and says that he is 'a bit disappointed' with the amount of tissue he has been able to obtain and 'hopes that it will be enough'. But that is it, it is over. Another dressing, another small wound, another week without a bath.
I am now spending hours on the internet researching my particular type of cancer, HER2+. I find lots to indicate that it is not a good one to have, finding comments like 'it used to be a death sentence'. But then again, I am reassured by the fact that Herceptin now exists and try to focus on that. I watch a video about Herceptin and how it works. What a great drug. It goes and finds those cancer cells, infiltrates them and kills them. Hurrah for Herceptin.
I also talk to as many people who have knowledge as I can. I am still hoping I might not need a mastectomy, although at first I just said, 'take them both, i just want to be alive'; once the possibility was raised that a lumpectomy would be as effective, I have been clinging to that as a possible surgical outcome.
Having said that. I also try to find out as much as I can about reconstruction. I don't understand all the drawings on the internet of the different options and am lucky enough to have a friend of a friend who is a breast cancer surgeon. In an hour-long phone call, she proves to be invaluable in explaining it all to me. I know from talking to her that I do not want to 'go flat'. I cannot bear the idea of looking like that. Many women do, I know, it is a personal thing and I discover that I have a deep emotional response to the idea of it. I also realise that the option of a 10-hour operation using my own tummy fat, with a much longer recovery time, is not suitable at this stage in my treatment. I swim a lot (front crawl) and so also rule out using muscle from my back. So, I decide on an implant under my pectoral muscle using a dermal sling made with pig skin. She also reassures me that if I hate the implant, or if I need radiotherapy (which could damage it) there are still options further down the line - the tummy fat or a replacement implant for instance.
But first, I need to get my MRI results and find out exactly what I am up against.
