The world stops when you find a lump

Staring down at the radiology request, a few handwritten words seemed to jump upwards off the page to the sky: Gritty. 8 mm. URGENT. Surely this wasn’t about me.

A month earlier I found a lump. My GP couldn’t feel it, but she sent me to get it checked out. I wasn’t that worried at the time; if my GP couldn’t feel it, it wasn’t there.

My appointment finally arrived by post (I hate how the NHS make appointments for you!) It wasn’t a particularly convenient time, 2 pm, right before pick up, so I called to reschedule. After about 10 minutes on hold, I decided it would be easier to get a friend to pick up the girls from school than to wrestle with the NHS. I kept the appointment.

I spent some time looking up breast cancer symptoms and was slightly reassured; the lump felt squishy to me, not hard and gritty. I thought it moved around a bit. Sometimes I could find it, sometimes I couldn’t. There were no skin changes. I convinced myself these were all good things.

So when I showed up to my appointment last week, and within minutes a senior Nurse Practitioner was sticking a long thin needle into a lump, my world stopped. She showed me what the needle had drawn out; watery fluid with a few drops of blood. It looks cyst-like, she said.

Then she asked me to come into her office; she wanted to know if I could come back in two days to get a mammogram and xray. The results of the needle aspiration would be back then. She talked to me as she was writing, and then handed me the radiology request, saying she had put me on the faster track and to remember to bring the slip of paper to xray when I came back then. She said not to worry. It was routine. I should have just put the paper in my bag. But I couldn’t resist. I had a job to trying to decipher the medical handwriting, but there it was making my heart drop: “Gritty on aspiration”, “lump 8 mm” and then URGENT in bold letters. I quickly put it back in my bag as if that would make it go away.

The next 48 hours didn’t really happen.  My husband was away on business. My nine-year-old proudly made toast for breakfast, cutting the bread into heart shapes, and slathered them with lemon curd and strawberry jam. I wasn’t hungry but I took a few bites. My girlfriends took me to a French restaurant for lunch and wondered why I was so quiet and left the goat cheese and bacon salad half eaten. I kept replaying the scene with the nurse in my head. It looks cyst-like. It looks cyst-like. I’d be OK, then suddenly I would start breathing really fast and heavy and feel sick.

Thank god for Charlene (you may have met her at CyberMummy, she was behind the reception desk). She took the girls to school when I went back to hospital and then came back to wait with me for the results. She talked to me about kitchens, joking about some of the parents at the school gate, and generally steering my mind away from the places it may rest, like if it is 8 mm, how long has it been there? Why did she write gritty? Who’s going to raise my children?

In my mind, my future was whirling around in the air, and could settle anywhere. Yes you do, no you don’t. It turned out to be no you don’t. The mammogram and xray came back normal. So did the needle results.

It does bug me that mammograms are not routine in the UK until your are 50 (!) and then you are only eligible for one every three years. In the US, if you have insurance, you are eligible for one every year after the age of 40. The NHS is great once something has been diagnosed, but surely early detection is key?

Please everyone — do a self exam regularly.

Photo: kittyxcat