New here and scared

Hi Maite

Welcome to the forum and sorry to hear that you may have breast cancer. No need to apologise for ranting on, facing a possible cancer diagnosis is scary. It’s good that you have someone to go with you when you get your results.

Wishing you the best of luck with your biopsy tomorrow and with your results.

Best wishes

Daisy53

Hello and welcome, oh and breathe !  

Hi Carol thank you so much for your message. A lot of it has reassured me so much. You were over ten years younger than I am now and you had to go all through that. I am more scared of the results than I am of the biopsy - does that sound daft? Nurse Negative was a bundle of joy - not! and pretty much told me that there was a chance that I would need surgery to remove something in this "extensive area of calcification" they found on today's ultrasound.... and the doctor doing the ultrasound had said there were "two spots of calcification". I am find it hard to talk about this with a nurse who has seen hundreds of women go through hundreds of similar yet different journeys. She isn't the one on the other end of the needle or the scalpel, so to speak!! Talking with women who have actually gone through this - and I am realising that each and every individual has a different finding/result/outcome and yet we all share the same kind of journey despite the differences - I feel that I am not alone in being scared, not alone in having to have treatment/tests, and not alone in any sense at all. That is very comforting to know. I am currently fixated on the leaflet they gave me on "Breast Calcification" which is the most positive leaflet I have so far, and implies that a benign outcome may be more likely than a sinister one. Thank you for your description of the biopsy as it gives me a better idea of what to expect. I am really not getting on at all well with the Breast Care Nurse they have assigned me and I'm sure she thinks I am a silly little worrier. I can hear the exasperation in her voice when I ask yet another question. I wish I knew how to change to a different nurse but maybe she's the only one. Maybe another one would be as bad. I call her Nurse Negative because she is implying to me that even though none of us yet know, the route I will be looking at is having bits of my boob cut out. I really don't need that kind of negativity right now as it just makes me panic all the more. Thank you so much for your support. I will try and remember the singing bit. I just started Silver Swans (adult ballet) last week and that is so very healing to me, I mean dancing is. I will visualise myself in the dance class and the little dance the teacher had us choreograph to a track out of Swan Lake. 

Thank you so much, Daisy, for your comforting words. I have spent all evening with my lovely friend Margaret and we have laughed and chatted and hugged and I am still shaking but am slightly less in denial and slightly more resigned to this. She gave me a breast cancer lapel pin earlier. I said I'm not going to wear it just yet. Directly after Results Day, I will wear it with pride. If my news is good, I will wear it in support of all those women whose news was/is not good. If my news is bad, I will of course wear it to show that I am going to survive breast cancer surgery. I do feel like I'm in the middle of a bad dream that I can't wake up from. I feel like this is happening to someone else, not to me. I need to come around to acceptance that it IS happening to me. That may take a little time. I can't really say "why me?" because it's more a case of "why not me"! Even if I turn out clear this time after biopsy, it's not to say I won't have the same health scare at future mammograms. So I think I'm always from now on going to be ultra-aware of the need for breast cancer support. 

Well! What a day!!! I came out beaming and said to Margaret, "I've had a LOVELY time!!" and I meant it!!! My first nurse was at the coffee machine as we went in and the whole place seemed calmer and gentler. She promised a coffee with my name on it when I finished! I was taken for a relaxed quite long chat with another lovely breast care nurse called Mary (Nurse Negative was on a day off and Mary was the nurse equivalent of my lovely friend - she was SO understanding, caring, gentle, she listened, she told me 90% positives and almost no negatives, told me much more detail about these calcifications which apparently I'd had a few of at my last mammo just over three years ago but they hadn't told me then. She explained it all, answered my questions so well, mopped up my few tears as and when, and ultimately told me that everything from start to finish is "precautionary" and that even if anything comes back pre-cancerous that doesn't mean I HAVE to be hacked about but that I can be in control if I wish and can even ask for a review and more tests in, say, three months time to see if it's worsened. She also said that cysts can break down into calcifications and it's possible I may have had a cyst in the intervening three years and that has now calcified. Which would be harmless of course. She explained every step and every cause and effect and in such a gentle way that even that brought a few tears! So now I feel already SO much better and of course not out of the woods yet but I feel so much stronger and more confident. So then a lovely Philipino nurse took me in and explained every little detail from the start to finish including the dressings. Honestly, she didn't skimp a detail!! In fact the whole procedure from arrival to departure lasted almost two hours but they were going at my pace and asnwering all my many questions constantly. And you wouldn't believe: this lovely Philipino nurse's name was: Lovely!!! Seriously! I couldn't get over that! and she WAS Lovely!! Then I met the other nurse who was going to be the assisting one and yet another jaw-dropping moment: we got chatting somehow about dogs and it turned out she is the daughter of one of our local vets who retired last year!!! What a small world!! So we all three chatted our hearts out about dogs and tractors and a thousand other things whilst I also watched the pictures on the screen in the room and I didn't even have time to think about singing music to myself!! 

The procedure itself: I had two areas to do. Lovely had explained every detail: one would sound like a cork popping and the other one would sound like a coffee machine turning and then the cork popping. I barely felt the needle, I actually didn't feel any numbness at all (nothing like when you get that jab in your gum at the dentist, I mean) and I was actually very comfortable throughout except that when they tried to sit me upright for the second one, having had me lying down for the first one, my hip and neck had locked and it was a bit of a procedure for me to get vertical!! They have done a really lovely job on the dressings. I have spare ones with me. Instructions to wear a bra in bed for the next couple of nights. 

The whole procedure was amazing. I feel like writing to the clinic in fact to commend all those there today because they couldn't have put me more at ease and they were all absolutely amazing!!

So now it's a waiting game to Results Day but already after my long chat with Mary, I feel so much more at ease whatever the result will be.

I checked my friend can come in with me that day and Charlotte said, of course! whatever the result, and took the words out of my mouth: that Margaret would help pick up on the details I miss either out of inattention because I'm elated or out of panic/fear because I'm in shock. 

So next week I shall start wearing my pink pin with pride because whatever my own outcome, I am now more aware than ever that thousands of women daily are going through what I've been through this week and I bet almost all have been/are just every bit as terrified as I have been!

I  don't think I'm out of the woods. This may get me one day even if it turns out that I dodge the bullet this time. Which of course I still won't know for a while so there's still a little fear there. Just, not as panicky now. I had the most dreadful night last night - barely slept, and the butterflies were having an all-night party in my chest! I am looking forward to catching up on my sleep now and indeed went for a two-hour nap this afternoon t start the process!

Thank you to those who are here for me and I will be here for you as well. I now know at first hand how terribly frightening all this can be.

My friend Margaret: she is 75 and of course hasn't had a mammo since she was 70.

She has asked for details and is going to book herself in for one (she actually thought you had to pay if you are over 70! I said, no you don't! you just have to book yourself one!) so worst-case scenario for us both, my experience may possibly end up saving two lives. So that in itself is very worthwhile!

Sorry this is yet again so long. I confess I always write a hundred words where ten might do! 

I am thinking now about all of you - those who have been so caring with me and those of you who have simply read, but still cared. I hope cancer research can beat this horrible disease sooner or later. Already, we are a hundred times more advanced than cancer care was thirty years ago. It can only get better!

Glad you had a positive experience today.  Fingers crossed for a good result xx

Thank you so much. It's very reassuring to me to know that I have this community to share my fears with and that you all understand this as you have been there before me. 

I had a routine Mammogram and was diagnosed with Cancer, a large lump. I had had a lump for several years and not done anything about it as I had a scare in my 20's and it was ok, plus I had mental health issues to deal with. I have found the NHS to be superb re support apart from last week when I spoke to a NHS nurse due to a Chest Infection who told me I had to come into hospital after I cancelled a Hickman line flush due to feeling unwell. . She was rude and insulting and I just ignored her and didn't rise. I have had a double mastectomy , am currently going through Chemo and will have radiotherapy. Everyone has been so supportive except this one person. I feel very blessed. I had a breakdown and found the help in Scotland not in England. In Scotland I got excellent support as with the Breast Cancer. In England I was made out to be the problem  re mental health issues. 

Watch Victoria Derbyshire, she had surgery , she was on the TV last night fit and well. My surgeon told me things are not like they used to be the survival rate is very good. Be happy and appreciate life 

Oh Cuba I'm so sorry to hear you have been through all this. I can relate to the "horrible nurse" because the one I saw yesterday I call Nurse Negative, whilst not being rude and insulting, was absolutely not suited to me as she stripped any glimmer of hope away from me. I have fared loads better with every other nurse I saw today but have a nasty feeling it may be Nurse Negative who will be seeing me on Results Day.

I am so angry that mental health is still so taboo and looked down on. Just because people can only see a physical illness or injury, too many still ignore all else. It's at times like this that our mental health runs hand in glove with our physical health and to ignore or put down the one is as bad as if they were ignoring the other, physical condition.

I am in Exeter and my local clinic is now (since about 3 years ago) NHS-badged but comes under the banner of "InHealth". It seems like they have outsourced breast care to this company but I think the nurse said it also covers other cancer care. Whilst it concerns me a little that we seem to be subtly drifting towards a privatised health service, equally I have never experienced half as much care and attention when dealing with any GPs who are not under this InHealth banner. Getting to see a GP in person in my area is about as hard as getting to meet Elton John or Neil Diamond in person. Even getting through on the phone is almost impossible. Whereas this InHealth set-up is really lovely - prompt to a fault, efficient, caring - the lot!! 

I don't know if InHealth is in every area or is it just in Exeter??

Cuba, you are so brave and you have gone through way more than I think I would be able to cope with if my news is bad. Hang in there. You are doing amazingly and you sound like you do have some good support if you only disregard that horrible rude nurse. I sometimes make excuses for them by saying, oh perhaps they were having a bad day or perhaps they were short-staffed that day and so stressed out. But seriously, in that case I believe they really ought not to be working if they can't cope with those of us who are frightened and going through life-changing illness.