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It was January when I went in for my regular mammogram. About four days later I got a call from my OBGYN. They’d seen something on the mammogram and they wanted me to go to a surgeon, which really freaked me out because nothing’s ever shown up before. They said, “Oh, we just want to do another mammogram.” They had me go right to the surgeon, and he said that they saw something, but that it was probably nothing; just in case, they wanted to do a biopsy anyway. So we made arrangements to do that. The technician looked at it and she asked me if I knew what they were looking for. She was very nice, and she took me into the room to show me what they were looking at –all these tiny spots at the base of my breast. She said, “That’s what we’re looking at; that’s what we’re going after.” So they did the biopsy right there.
Within the week, I had to go in and talk to the surgeon. So I went in, and I was very shocked. You sit there, nervous, and you think, “Oh, this isn’t real; I’m sure it’s nothing.” You convince yourself, and then the doctor comes in. And this is a doctor that just doesn’t pull any punches. He closes the door and says, “Like I told you before, I was really concerned about the cells that I saw.” So at first you’re just sitting there, like, “I think this guy’s got the wrong room.” Seriously, I just thought, “You’ve got the wrong person.”
I went to see the surgeon by myself because I thought it was going to be nothing. It was just like an out-of-body experience. The doctor brought over my chart and he showed me where the pathologist had written, and I looked at my name just to make sure he had the right person! I just KNEW he went in the wrong room. And then I saw my name, and was just absolutely stunned. He said, “The only way to get this is to go and do surgery, and it won’t be a lumpectomy; it’ll be a partial mastectomy because you don’t have a lump. So we have to go in and get that tissue and the tissue around it.” So I was just absolutely stunned.
There is no cancer history in my family. Nobody in my family really had mammograms. Since my diagnosis, they’ve started coming around. But there are so many women that say, “Oh, that’ll never be me.” It CAN be you. I am not shy about talking about it. It changes your life forever.
The doctor immediately called the radiation oncologist and sent me over there to speak with him. They do a thing now, where if it’s not very advanced and not in the lymph nodes, you can have what’s called a mammosite. Once you’re all clear after surgery, they put in this little balloon thing with a tube in place of where they took breast tissue, and that’s how you receive radiation.
So it was a Friday afternoon that I got the mammosite put in, and on that following Monday, I started getting radiation. What was neat about it was that I wasn’t alone. I was set up with two other women with breast cancer. One of the women, I remember, had found hers in a lump, and as it turned out, she had breast cancer, liver cancer, and the cancer had spread to her spine. It had been five years since her last mammogram. And so she not only was going through the mammosite, she also had to go on chemo and many other things. That’s why early detection is so important!
I just had my anniversary of getting through my radiation – and I just had another mammogram. I’m clear! Everything looks great.
- Darlene
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