Cancer is not the word I want to hear coming out of my doctors mouth or even the P.A.'s mouth. Yet I am going again tonight for a second or is this my third or fourth opinion. I think I was 36 the first time I went for a mammogram and heard cancer come out of the doctor's mouth. I just sort of sat there in awe. Hmmm, thinking for a moment. Yea, ok, that must have been someone else they were talking about. I had a mammogram, but they needed more views.
It was my gyn who I mentioned it to that a had felt a lump about the size of a BB. Off I went to get a mammo. It was read and all was fine. Nothing showed, not even this BB-sized lump I could feel as well as the doctor. I wanted a second opinion. I went to another diagnostic imaging center just for breast cancer called Sloan-Kettering. Let me just say if you want to meet some great women, go there! There were women who had one breast, two, none and women who were just going there for the first time. All I know is that I was scared shitless. By the time I was done talking with some of the other women I felt an ease that was incredible.
The nurse called me in and off the get my breasts squashed, as I put it. It hurts and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I have, well now after my weight loss, small breasts and it hurts worse now than it did when they were larger. I now go back out and sit to await results. Tick, tock, time goes by and they call me again, they need more views.
They findings are what they call Bi-Rads 3, which means probably benign. They want me back in six months and I have dense breasts. This is nuts. To me it means, I worry for six months and nothing more until I get cleared. This just continues for then next five years. I have nothing wrong as they keep telling me. They clear me for a once a year mammo and it has been that way since.
As I said prior, I am now 45 and in July I started having some green pus-like drainage come out of my left breast. Remember now, this is the one I found a BB-sized lump in several years ago. This lump now feels like it's the size of a golf ball. I have been complaining and mentioning it to doctors for sometime now, months. It wasn't until July that I had to do something. I go to the ER to have it examined and I get an antibiotic. I still don't think it's an infection, but hey, I'm not a doctor. Although it only showed a few strains of an infection I was still given an antibiotic.
It's now November and I have been told that I need to see a surgeon for a biopsy, hmmm, go figure. They want to run some tests and see if it is cancerous. Well son of a bitch, I mentioned that to you oh, in July, last year and the November prior on my last mammo. When you told me I had several cysts in one breast and a mass in the other. Mass, really, but nothing there. How many doctors do you need to see before they actually look further? Do I need to be my own doctor and advocate? It seems as if I keep getting pushed to the side. I had leukoplakia in my uterus and had a hysterectomy in 2004, this is in my history. This is not new.
The doctors put you on pain medicine for everything today. I have a hang-nail, here's a prescription. I mean really!? I don't need medicine; I don't want medicine. What I would like is to have a doctor know me, examine and and not push me off just because, oh that's right I don't have full insurance. If it is cancer and you pushed me aside, who pays for that, surely it's not them.
No comments:
Post a Comment