Diagnosis 1st March 2018.
I’m 34, five foot six, blonde by nature, temperament and colour scheme. I am also a winner! I won the statistical lottery! I am one of the lucky 624 souls in my age bracket to be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. It doesn’t really compute, and the diagnosis sits in the pit of my stomach like something undigested that could come back up at any moment. I feel healthy and certainly don’t feel unwell, although the doctors now tell me my life is at risk – I have grade 3 invasive ductal carcinoma, and it has permeated my lymphatic system.
I found a lump, a big one. I went straight to my GP who referred me on. Well, actually, that is a stretch. I rang my GP surgery when they opened at 8:30 AM, but they had no face-to-face appointments available, so they arranged a telephone consultation for a lump in my breast. Work that one out! I laughed at the ridiculousness of it though had little choice but to proceed. The GP agreed that our phone call was futile and called me in for an emergency appointment the following day.
Brushed off as a cyst
Initially the Doctor brushed the lump off as a cyst. It took more than a little persistence on my behalf to get the referral I wanted, as I am so young. After getting push back, I gave the ‘I have family history’ line, and that did the trick. My aunt had this beast last year, and although I didn’t in a million years believe I also had the winning ticket – I just wanted to be sure.
My lump was too big to miss for any amount of time, 3.4 centimetres in diameter, and it felt like it came up overnight. I called her my Big Squishy as she didn’t hurt and was well, squishy. A cyst, the GP told me, and the surgeon concurred. A cyst, the ultrasound doctor told me, and I concurred. At each stage I felt I was being given the brush off.
Then another lump came up just as swiftly to join the gang; I named her Peanut – most likely a fibroadenoma, the ultrasound doctor said. I’m surely too young for anything more sinister, so I didn’t worry overly; she was simply my Big Squishy and her little friend Peanut.
They took biopsies anyway just to be on the safe side.
The machine sounded like a staple gun, loud and slow….. CLACK, CLACK, CLACK. It hurt even though I’d been injected with anaesthetic, especially the one in what he referred to as my ‘Sentinel node’. I remember thinking my sentinel must be standing guard over the rest, good sentinel. The bruising that followed was gruesome, and my node ached for weeks.
The worst news possible…breast cancer
Well, I sure showed them all; If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it properly, please. When my results arrived, oestrogen receptor positive 8/8, HER2 negative. CANCER, you say? I remember sitting there holding a cup of coffee like it was the last cup on this earth, my knuckles were white, my friend was crying but I was not, I had tunnel vision. The surgeon was reeling words off like ‘mammogram’, ‘full body scan’, ‘mastectomy’, ‘lymph node clearance’, ‘chemotherapy’ ‘radiotherapy’, ‘hormone treatment’, ‘fertility treatment’, ‘gene testing’ and all I could think was thank fuck this cup is withstanding my vice-like grip, my fingers hurt.
The surgeon then left the room to get this rollercoaster of treatments off the ground. The appointment felt so brief. Those life changing 15 minutes felt stretched out like elastic, taut and ready to snap. My breast care nurse then started her own dialogue. Like a rabbit in headlights, I stared at her pretty face, trying to absorb what she was saying, and the only word that sunk in past the shock was ‘AGGRESSIVE.’ My mouth went dry, my face went green and I had to lie down. A glass of water was handed to me. Once I had regained some composure, they asked me to return to the waiting room, as more tests were needed. They also handed me a pink plastic bag full of about 20 trees worth of pamphlets, booklets leaflets with headings like ‘Breast cancer in younger women’, ‘your operation and recovery’, ‘breast cancer and hair loss’, ‘understanding your pathology report’, to name a few.
Sitting there in a large room full of strangers, my world was spinning; I was numb. They’re going to chop my boob off and chuck it in the bin, my hair is gonna fall out. Fuck you boob. She is my nice boob, too; The other one has never sat quite right. She hangs a little different and is less perky than her twin. I fingered through some of the reading material but had to put it away. Unable to comprehend what the written words were trying to say, I hid them back in the pink bag. This can’t be happening.
After what felt like forever, they called me into the mammogram room. Well, the results sure put everyone on their bums. My Big Squishy, the cystic pretender, and her little friend Peanut, the fibroadenoma lookalike, were, in fact, one giant mass of cancerific cells having a ball and inviting all of their friends. A whopping 8 centimetres by 3.4 centimetres of party area to be more exact, most of which was something called calcifications.
That was a lot worse than what they expected. I could see pity in their eyes as they were telling me – very surreal. Unreal even. Back to the waiting room I go, shell shocked and too numb to express any emotions now. Time goes by, but I’m not sure how much of it. They call my name again, an ultrasound this time for the other boob. I fear the worst. Today was such a blow I reasoned that I must have it there, too. Why not? The results were negative but I didn’t believe them at first. After all that was good news and today had offered so little of it thus far.
I then got directed to the phlebotomist as they needed to analyse my blood. I love that word. Phlebotomist. Almost like a cross between phlegm and botanist. Growing green things instead of red, ha-ha. Anyway, the nurse had multiple attempts at finding a suitable vein. Apparently shock had shrunk my pipes. She succeeded, but only just. I now have another massive bruise. Bloods done, I was released back into the wild, homeward bound.
How can they just drop the C-bomb, then off you go back into normality? It is a very odd and unexplainable moment. Unless you’ve lived it, you cannot relate. They tell me that I most likely was growing this beast for years, undetected, free to divide and conquer, to malignantly roam and spread.
There is no screening programme for people my age.
Spoiler alert: 2024 – I’m still here and doing well. Part 2 to follow shortly.
Nell – well. Photo by the author.
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