🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌

We’ve been doing a guided meditation that’s geared toward visualizing your body healing/fighting abnormal cells. My brain instantly conjured up deer for many of these visualizations, so I dressed for my appointment (yesterday, 8/27) accordingly.

We arrived at the breast center around 1:30 for my 2:00 appointment. Patton was happy to be going somewhere besides school, and (of course) has no idea what’s going on. I was glad that the breast center let Brant and Patton come with me for the biopsy, because SIRA would not.

I checked in and was taken back to a room for intake forms. Eventually, I met my doctor- Dr. Liu. She went over all of the recent scans from SIRA. She showed me what the mass looked like on the images, and what was abnormal about it. She also showed me a benign cyst on the same imaging, which looks very different. I would have gotten some pictures, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain it myself, anyway. SIRA said they did not see anything abnormal on my mammogram (only the ultrasound), but Dr. Liu did. I didn’t think to ask if she could see anything on the one from November, but I intend to ask her at my next appointment.

She did not seem concerned about the changes I had last November, or any of my recent “symptoms”. She was tight-lipped about the “bites”, though, which leads me to think she considers them to be cause for concern.. 

Next, she did a thorough physical exam. She said the mass was about 2 cm, which was what I had already guessed from the chart on the counter in the room. She did not feel any obvious abnormalities in my lymph nodes or surrounding tissues, at this time.

She then described what would happen leading up to and during the biopsy. They gave me a gown, had me bag up all of my stuff, and sent me down for the biggest, scariest part of my visit.

They started with another ultrasound, and continued the ultrasound during the biopsy (to ensure that it was done in the exact right place). She gave me an injection to numb the area, then used a hollow needle-y thing to get the tissue. The needle-y thing was connected to a suction machine, which was not quite as loud or gross sounding as Patton’s. 😆 The suction machine sucked out samples of tissue for testing. I believe she took 6 samples. Then they flushed the area and placed a metal clip inside. This will be used in future imaging- either to clarify that the suspicious area has already been tested, to use as a guide for removing remaining cancerous tissue, or to keep an eye on changes to surrounding areas. After the clip was placed, they closed it up with steri-strips. 

Finally, they did a post biopsy mammogram, and then.. it was all done. 

And we wait. 

I will get the results in 3-5 business days. They will be uploaded to a patient portal, so I can access them as soon as they are available, but they will also call to discuss everything. They said that they will call Monday to see how I’m doing, but that this call will NOT be the results call.

I have to wear a sports bra for 24 hours. The procedure was not really painful, but post-procedure has been kind of rough. I can take Tylenol and ice the area, as needed. (This “pain management” plan is complete bullshit, if you ask me…) I can’t shower for 24 hours, and have to keep the area dry when I do. No soaking in a tub for at least a week. No exercising, or lifting over 5 pounds. I have to leave the steri-strips on at least 4 days, or until they fall off.

I am having quite a bit of pain, but of course, I’d rather have any and all cancer cells out of my body as fast as possible, so I will deal. I had some bleeding last night, and had a little bit of trouble getting it to stop, but, it hasn’t bled at all today, so far.

I’m icing, taking Tylenol, and waiting. That’s my life now.