A lot of people have asked me “how did you first find out you had breast cancer?” Believe it or not this trip down the rabbit hole started one day in the mirror while I was shaving under my left arm. Glamorous, right? I don’t know if it was the angle I was standing at or the way the light in the bathroom was at that moment, but I noticed a dimpling in the skin on my left breast while my arm was raised up over my head while shaving. “What the hell is that?” I wondered. Had that always been there? I didn’t think so. I definitely think I would have noticed that before. When I was done shaving I laid down on my bed and started feeling around my left breast in the area I had seen the dimple. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for and because I was looking for something, now everything felt like a lump. It seemed like I could feel something, but I didn’t trust in my own judgment at this point.
The next morning I walked into my OB/GYNs office without an appointment and asked to have my doctor give me a breast exam because I thought I had found a lump, but I wanted to be sure. As luck would have it my regular doctor was out delivering a baby so I saw his associate. Because I didn’t have an appointment they had to “work me in”. “Working you in” means that you’ll wait at least an hour in the examining room before anybody comes in to see you. I didn’t care, I would have waited all day long. I just wanted a professional to check this out and lay my worries to rest. When the doctor finally came in and examined me she said she could feel something too, but that it was probably a cyst. I mean I’m relatively young to have breast cancer, my last mammogram was fine and I have no family history of the disease, so what are the odds? Yes…probably a cyst. What a relief! She wrote me an order to go have a mammogram a couple days later just to be sure. On my way out she assured me again that she didn’t think I had anything to worry about.
The next morning I walked into my OB/GYNs office without an appointment and asked to have my doctor give me a breast exam because I thought I had found a lump, but I wanted to be sure. As luck would have it my regular doctor was out delivering a baby so I saw his associate. Because I didn’t have an appointment they had to “work me in”. “Working you in” means that you’ll wait at least an hour in the examining room before anybody comes in to see you. I didn’t care, I would have waited all day long. I just wanted a professional to check this out and lay my worries to rest. When the doctor finally came in and examined me she said she could feel something too, but that it was probably a cyst. I mean I’m relatively young to have breast cancer, my last mammogram was fine and I have no family history of the disease, so what are the odds? Yes…probably a cyst. What a relief! She wrote me an order to go have a mammogram a couple days later just to be sure. On my way out she assured me again that she didn’t think I had anything to worry about.
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