It began with admitting to my new GP on 13 October 2016 that I had been pretending the mahoosive lump in my left breast was nothing to worry about.
After all, back in 2014 when I was living full time in London, the breast team at Homerton Hospital had told me to go away, enjoy my life, forget about the lumps, not have regular check ups as my age and family history didn't warrant them, and only come back if I had obviously new lumps to concern them with. At that check up they'd also decided that I had had too many recent mammograms to risk having another set, that to biopsy the regrown fibroadenomas would cause more problems than not because I had such tough breast tissue (granite) the needles would bend again and cause more problems and that any pain was a sign of nothing to worry about. I had had two collections of fibroadenomas taken out in 2008 and 2012, and one tiny spot of suspicious calcifying cells hoovered up in 2012 as well, identified for posterity with a tiny surgical metal marker that's never been comfortable.
The GP started cheerily enough, did an exam, didn't get very far and frowned at me a lot, did that professional 'I'm very calm' in a flustered way, and admitted none of my GP notes had arrived in Scotland from my previous London GP, despite being registered in Scotland for over a year already. She did some very kind and generous downplaying, and promised me a speedy referral.
I went home having a strong suspicion it was 'trouble' but with no real evidence to go on, there was zero point in worrying at that juncture.
