Back to the Borders General Hospital on 11 November, a few days after initial diagnosis, to have the second lot of biopsies. There was a delay because the radiologist was being thorough with all the patients before me, which I was more than happy about. I would want everyone to have as much time taken over them as I would hope for myself. So I had time to sit and organise my thoughts a bit, sort out lists of whom to contact and in which order any time I had an update - split into phone, messenger, text and email. I also sorted out my questions for the radiologist - clarity on The Lump and other niggling doubts.
Eventually I was seen and a 40 minute appt ensued which had me in stitches of laughter as the radiologist made huge efforts to make sure I was comfortable with all the gunning he was doing, and make sure all the samples were going to go into appropriately marked pots, matching up with markers he was going to leave in each biopsy pathway to show up on mammograms. The bit that sent me was when he said I was putting up with the pain very well, and I explained it was only short and passing, and he'd whacked in so much lidocane it was nowhere near as bad as getting my legs waxed. This set off an entire conversation that had the nurse, the radiologist and me struggling to keep it together. There was also a lot of hilarity over the many marker shapes he needed to use, and make sure they were different from the ones already in my left breast. His way of remembering marker packet colours and their contents was brilliant. Meanwhile, he did a very efficient and thorough job, giving me a running commentary on what he felt was going on with the suspicious fibroadenoma, the suspicious area of suspected calcification and the suspicious reactive axillary node. Two of the suspicious areas he felt were less suspicious now he was able to really focus on them. But one remained a high risk and given it was borderline cancer back in 2012, I suspect (with no evidence yet) it may be a different kind of cancer from The Lump. We'll see. In any event, I'm open to having further tests whether the node shows up spread or not. I'll be having a long chat with the oncologist. My main question for the radiologist was about my right breast - was that really all benign? He said categorically yes, the MRI was very sensitive and would have picked up anything.
Off I went upstairs again to have mammograms whilst the anaesthetic was still working, to get pictures of the new markers in situ, and then it was off to lunch with my very patient friend. We were seriously hungry and went straight to a bistro for venison stew. Nutrition is important now!
Meanwhile, I clarified with the cancer nurse two things - The Lump was HER2 negative, and it was roughly a Stage II, given or take whatever else gets found. Next stop, results two on 21 November.
