My boobies

At my mammogram ten years ago, they found a mass. "Don't worry, but you'll need an ultrasound and biopsy, just to be a 100% safe, but DON'T WORRY." 

I worried anyway, but it turned out to be a fibroadenoma, benign. Common in pre-menopausal women with dense breast tissue. They left a little piece of metal in my left booby to mark the spot. 

Every year since, I have gotten a mammo, the last screening one was May 2024, normal. But around late December, early January, I started feeling a little nagging itch inside my right breast. A very strange sensation. I scratched it, and it came and went for a few weeks until one time in late January I felt a lump under the skin. Ran to my primary care doc, and she felt it too. She wrote me a diagnostic mammogram order, with ultrasound. 

At this appointment, they did not tell me "don't worry." And the ultrasound doctor said "yeah, I don't like the looks of this, but whatever it is, it's small, 1.4 cm, so try not to freak out. An ultrasound guided biopsy followed a week or so later, and then the dreaded news, cancer. Ductal carcinoma in situ, and a bonus invasive ductal carcinoma. The most common form of breast cancer. 

A few days after that, the second part of the pathology report revealed that it was estrogen and progesterone positive, and HER2 negative (not sure I spelled that exactly, but I'm in a rush right now). The fact that the tumor is fed by hormones is supposed to be good news, because you cut off the hormones, and it is less likely to come back. 

So my treatment plan at Inova Schar Cancer Institute is partial mastectomy (aka lumpectomy) with "breast rearrangement" courtesy of a plastic surgeon, and sentinal lymph node dissection. If the cancer cells are in the lymph node, that's bad news. And, we hope to be in the 95% of patients who get clean margins the first time. Then, the lump is sent to some fancy lab in California, where they do all kinds of analysis and send back an "Oncotype" report in about a month. Based on that, I will either have radiation only, or chemo first and then radiation. 

Surgery is tomorrow, March 12, 2025. Physical recovery should be about 2 weeks and I've read many women only need OTC pain relievers. My sister is coming down from NY to be with me, and my kids are taking the day off classes at NOVA, and they are also on spring break next week, so I am good to go. 

Now let's go procure a hasty lumpectomy!