Hi I'm not sure if I should post this here. I just wanted to share my experience in hope that it would help someone else. In many of these groups you have people who are worried they have cancer and you never get to hear the end of the story. I thought I would share my story.
In November I was lying on my right side when I reached for the bed light and brushed along a large lump in my left breast. I had a good feel and found it was the size of a conquer but not round. I wondered how I had never felt it before but I have always had quite lumpy breasts but this lump wasn't like the rest, it was like it was stuck on to my breast and I couldn't feel the same in my right breast. I'm only 24 so I brushed it off.
Around February time I found I was thinking about it a lot. I couldn't stop touching it and searching the internet on what it could be. My lump is hard, has irregular edges, does not move, painless and I also developed an enlarged lymph node above my left collarbone. Of course all of this led me to think the worst that I have cancer as that is what doctor Google tells you are the tell-tell signs of breast cancer.
I would lie awake at night in a cold sweat imagining the worst. A few weeks later I decided I couldn't put it off any longer and went to the doctor. He felt the lump and kind of laughed saying that I was too young for it to be anything sinister so try not to look so worried. I felt silly like I knew I would and the doctor sent me away saying it was just a nodule but said to come back if there were any changes.
At the end of March just as lockdown started I noticed the lump had grown or had seemed too. My partner thought it had grown too. I went to the doctors but was refused entry saying my breast lump was not an emergency but I was checked by a nurse who said there was no infection but I must get the lump checked after lockdown finished.
Every night I would lay there in a cold sweat worried sick looking at posts on forums trying to find similarities in other people's stories just to try and re assure myself it wasn't anything sinister but I would always come back to the fact that my lump exactly matched the criteria for cancer. I was getting chest pains which I now know was anxiety but I became convinced it had now spread which was causing the pain. It was the last thing I thought about before bed and the first when I woke up.
Around 1 week ago I decided I couldn't take it anymore and requested a phone call from my doctor. He asked me how big it was and when I said around the size of a walnut he seemed surprised. He said I need to get it checked and said I could either wait until I was called for a scan which could be a while or pay and have it done that day at a government clinic. As I'm only 24 he suggested I have an ultrasound.
To cut a long story short, the lump showed up on on the screen but as the other normal tissue in my breast. It was just normal breast tissue!! The doctor who did the exam said that sometimes breast tissue just becomes hardened. You could clearly see the outline of the lump and that it was large but inside it was just concentrated tissue the same as the rest of the breast. I don't have anything similar in the rest of my breast or the other one.
I feel a bit of a fraud posting this here but this is the post I wish I had seen those nights when I was up all night every night worrying! I'm sorry if this is boring or not appropriate for the forum but I want people to know that it doesn't always turn out to be the worst. I am aware that the chance of a 24 year old having breast cancer is very very slim but it does happen. Even if this helps just one person reading this who is worrying out there then it's worth it for me to post this. Don't always think the worst! Go the doctor and put your mind at rest.
