Do you have time?? NOOOOO!

So the girl child had been set to get her tonsils removed on December 27th.  We would be at hospital for her pre-op work on the 26th, coincidentally, about 14 steps from where I needed to go to find out my mammo results.  Easy enough!  Besides, if "Daddy" gives me ONE. MORE. LECTURE. about taking care of MYSELF, I'm going to SCREEEEEAAAAAM.  Fine! Done and DONE!  I set the appointment.  Come to think of it, it has been bothering me more lately...kind of like when I nursed and I was a bit engorged...or maybe it was even burning on occasion.  I don't know for sure how to best describe it but it was definitely more bothersome.  Be it my imagination, because I knew something was there, or not...I was ready for it be get shrunk, at the very least.

Strangely, it wasn't just a pop in, "Yup, all is well" appointment.  I had to get back into the lovely robe and wait in the ultra-nice, swanky sitting room because the radiologist needed more views of the mammo.  Well YAY me!  Another mammo??  Merry late Christmas to ME---sheesh! I was sooooo regretting not canceling a FIFTH time.  I really need to be devoting all of my focus on my girl and her tonsils. DRAT!!

So I sat, after the newest mammo, and another nurse came in and kindly told me that they'd like to do an ultrasound, if I have time today.  And, if not, they could get me in tomorrow.  My inside screamed, "NO! Actually I don't have time! My daughter has surgery in the wee hours of the morning and I still have to spend quality time with her, quality time with the son (in case the Nurse Momma time takes up the rest of the break and he didn't have my undivided attention...no, HE doesn't care that I'm not hovering, in his way, but *I* do).  Plus, I still had to buy popsicles and any other soft foods I could get creative with,  and etc., etc.  Besides that… Lady!  Have you NOT seen my track record??  SURELY they have some notes or something that tells you…I’m not gonna be coming back tomorrow.  The thought of hearing my husband, with his “father tone” one more time crept into my mind and, suddenly, I heard myself politely reply, “Sure, I have time” and followed her into the darkened room for an ultrasound.

As I laid there, the ultrasound tech and nurses murmured to each other as they prepped the equipment.  *I* was running my to-do list of the rest of the day through my head, once again.  The tech did her thing, she was funny, we figured out that she knew some people back in Indiana, fairly near my old stomping ground.  It went quickly, the gel was oh-so-courteously-warmed, the conversation light and good and soon I was escorted back into the sitting room but instructed not to dress just yet.  Apparently, the radiologist liked to look over the ultrasound himself, in case (like the mammo) he needed to see something again or better or...whatever.

As the smiling nurse popped her head back in, she said that the radiologist wanted to rescan one of the areas and I was, again, led back into the darkened room and he almost silently rescanned my “cyst” and armpit area.  Before I knew he was even finished, he’d sat in a chair, softly crossed his arms, the nurses had de-KY Jellied me, and propped my table up into a chair position.  The lights remained low and it was hard to see his expression but there was no missing the, “Well, I wish I had better news for you.”  Holy hell, are you KIDDING ME??  It is *JUST* A CYST!!

Just a Cyst

So one evening in October, I happen to have the in-laws around. So, instead of my typical "Bra-less Brandi" like when I'm home amongst just hubby and the kiddos, I changed into my pajamas and dug out the old, trusty sports bra. Being NON-sporty in a handful of years, I had to adjust and tug to get it quite right and, as I did, I juuuuuuust so happened to catch the outermost part of my left breast just so and thought I felt a lil bump. After getting everything adjusted, I gave that bump a second thought and rubbed my hand back around the area and low and behold...sure as heck was! A bump...no doubt about it. Hmm...should I worry? Nah, I’m only 38 and I wasn’t even old enough to need my first mammogram yet.
 
So out I go and more as kind of a "Oh yuck! This tastes AWFUL! Here, taste it!!" kinna thing, I’m really needing someone else to feel and "Well I'll be!" with me.  The mother-in-law was the lucky candidate so I guided her hand and asked if she could feel it. Yup, and then we got into discussion about how this person had a cyst and that person had some kind of fibrous mass...all totally harmless BUT it's definitely something to check out just to make sure. And the boobie talk reminded me, "Oh speaking of...how's Aunt Blank's breast cancer? How's she doing?" And on and on the discussion went, as we flowed from discussion topic to the next and the bump and all breastie discussion was soon forgotten.
 
Now...hubby overheard bits of our discussion but was fairly busy catching up with his dad.  However; a few days later, "Hey babe, did you have that bump checked yet?" Nope...I've been biz. With two kids and projects, strep season getting into full swing, my lil Etsy shop sales picking up with the earliest Christmas shoppers getting warmed up, and laundry, dust, dishes, football games for the male child, a sick animal to the vet here and there, and, well...LIFE...I sure hadn't.
 
By early November, the same question had been asked multiple times so I'd finally grown tired enough of the lecture that followed my "No, not yet" that I made an appointment with my OB/Gyn. I was a wee bit late for my yearly anyway so what they hey.  Because of my "real" doc not having any openings for several weeks, I scheduled with a nurse practioner.
 
Let me preface this next part by disclosing that I'm a full blown Googlologist...if there was a degree for that, I'd have **multiples** under my belt.  So I googled and was pretty satisfied with my self-diagnosis. (In my defense, so often, I'm right on with my Google assisted self-diagnosis, and am usually pretty satisfied with myself after a doc comes to the same conclusion.) I'd decided that I had a harmless cyst. It was tender and everything I'd read confirmed that pain or discomfort was good, as cancer is painless. Annnnd it seemed to be movable, to some degree.  And it seems as if statistics were in my favor and something like 80% of all lumps are nothing.  I don’t have a family history of breast cancer, I’m young compared to the average 50-60 age group, and to be honest…it was one of those “that kinna thing happens to OTHER people…like *I’d* have cancer.”  Yup, a cyst it must be.
 
So I shared my hunch about the bump being a cyst and the nurse practioner seemed to agree. "It moves and feels like an oval, and most cysts are oval, so those are both good signs. And it your breasts look symmetrical and neither has any dimpling," blah blah blah. "I think you might be right...it DOES seem to have very cyst-like qualities. Let's set you up with a mammogram to make sure it’s nothing to worry about.  So fine...some quick lil pokin around and I felt like I'd done my job.  Now...did I go back after the radiologist had looked over the mammo to see what the first DOCTOR in the equation thought? Nope. Again...BUSY.
 
I made and canceled that next step FOUR times. Something more pressing kept getting in the way. Besides, in my mind, I'd long ago decided that it was a pesky cyst and, through my Google research, I'd discovered that the solutions for those are 1. a change diet/decrease caffeine and see if it goes down on its own, 2. use a needle to remove fluid to reduce its size, or 3. the worst case scenario...surgically remove the sucker. No rush on THAT, geez!  I wasn’t even *bothering* me!