Let me just start this by saying that I had no intention of blogging about this or even telling people about it, but Robbie asked me earlier if I was going to blog about it and I got to thinking that it may actually be helpful to someone. And most of my posts are not helpful, so I guess I'm going to go with it.
Or I will at least type it all out. It just may never actually get published onto my blog.
But if it didn't, you wouldn't be reading this right now trying to figure out when I'm going to get to the point.
Wow.
Anyway, I'm 35 years old, and apparently that is that magic number for when women should get their baseline mammogram. Get a baseline at 35, and then no more squishing until age 40 (which I cannot believe is only 5 years from now!).
So it was only about a month ago that I had my first mammogram appointment. I had not thought a lot about the appointment at all. I had spent the day out of town at a waterpark with friends, and then got back into town at 5:00 for my appointment. It was really just an inconvenience at that point. Nevertheless, I was there. Waiting to get squished.
I'm not going to go into the mammo in detail, but I will say that when the woman said "hold your breath', I realized I already was because IT HURT TOO MUCH TO BREATHE at the moment.
If men would only realize what we go through being a woman, I think they would fall down and worship the ground we walk on.
Ok, maybe not that, but they may at least unload the dishwasher every once in a while.
The week that I was in Washington, I got 2 letters in the mail. One was from my gyn. The other was from St. Michael. Both stating that my mammogram showed something that wasn't just right, and to call to get an appointment for further testing.
So I called my doctor and was told that I need to go back in for another mammogram, and this time I also had to get an ultrasound, and I would find out the results immediately.
She assured me that it was more than likely not breast cancer, but they needed a better look to be sure.
I told VERY few people about this for a few different reasons. I didn't want people to worry about me if there was really nothing to worry about. The handful of people that I told were people I knew would pray about it. And if it did end up being cancer, I wanted to be able to deal with it on my own for a while before I had to answer questions about it.
Robbie has been so good to me with all of this too. He somehow just knew when I was thinking about it and would give me a hug and say "whatever it is, we'll get through this together'. He's been so so supportive through all of this.
So, today was my appointment. One of the dearest people in the world to me, Sara, came with me for support. She went through all of it with me today, and I've got tears in my eyes right now thinking about how much that means to me. She knew I was planning to go alone since Robbie had the kids, and she also knew that I could be told this very day that I had cancer. And she chose to be by my side for that so I wouldn't have to do it all alone. Thank you Sara. I am so thankful for your friendship.
I had the mammogram done first today. She only had to do one side, and it didn't hurt as bad as it did last time. I'm not sure if it's because she didn't squeeze as tight, or if it was because I had Sara there for support, but it wasn't too bad today.
After the mammogram part was done, they sent us to the ultrasound room. The ultrasound lasted a lot longer than I thought it would, and was a little uncomfortable, but not bad. The ultrasound lady said that she was going to show the results to the radiologist and would be back in a few minutes.
Another moment that I'm so thankful Sara was with me so I wasn't left alone with my thoughts.
When the girl came back into the room, she said that the radiologist said that it was absolutely nothing to worry about. It was either a cyst or blocked milk duct, and neither of those were something to worry about.
And this is where Sara and I praised God!
The only reason I decided to do this post is because I know that SO many women get back abnormal mammograms, which means that there are SO many women that worry about having breast cancer. It runs in my family, so I am more at risk, so it was a concern of mine before I even started this whole process. And out of the few women I told, almost all of them told me of other people they knew that had recently gone through the exact same thing, with a good result at the end. If you are a woman that is reading this, and you someday get back an abnormal mammogram, please know that even a little cyst will cause a mammo to come back abnormal.And I know it gave me comfort knowing so many other people had been through this same thing and everything was fine.
So my hope is that this will give someone else comfort if they ever have to go through this. And if we are friends and you're going to have to go through this alone, CALL ME! I will do everything I can to be there for you. After today, I know how important it is to have someone there.
Wait! Have I mentioned how thankful I am for Sara?
Because I am. :)
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