Up, Down and All Around

Awareness to Action

It's been six or seven weeks since I posted an entry here about October being Cancer Awareness Month.

Since I had taken the time to make myself aware, I figured I should actually translate that awareness into action, particularly when it comes to breast cancer detection.

Won't go into much detail, but the bottomline is that I felt uneasy after performing my first self-examination. Since I don't make a habit of touching other people's breasts (haha), I had no idea if what I was feeling was normal or not. I did know for sure, though, that I could feel something.

So, of course I go to tell my mom, and after some discussion, we agreed that I should go for a mammogram, just to put our minds at rest. It wasn't too hard to find a timeslot that would work for me schedule-wise, and eventually, I got around to getting the mammogram done.

Man, was it painful! I cannot describe enough how painful it is to be squashed by a machine four times (two on each side)! Ugh! Granted, it doesn't last too long, but boy, do those few seconds feel like eternity! I think I felt sore even the day after.

It's a good thing I had followed some advice I found in a forum somewhere and I had taken an Advil an hour or so before the procedure, so I think that helped to make the experience more bearable. While I do not look forward to getting another mammogram done anytime soon, I would not hesitate to do it again if it meant that I'd have breast cancer diagnosed earlier.

Anyway, after enduring all that pain, the report came back as "inconclusive". Man! I was cursing nonstop in my head when I first saw that report, because it meant that I had literally gone through the wringer for nothing!! Turns out my tissues are too dense (this is apparently true for most young people, which is why mammograms are recommended starting the age of 40), and dense tissue shows up as white on the xray plate. Unfortunately, cancer tumors also show up as white on the xray plate, hence the inconclusive finding. The report further recommended that I get a follow-up ultrasound to get more conclusive results.

Well, I'd already started down this road, and I didn't feel completely at ease about just stopping at this point, so I swallowed my disappointment and mentally psyched myself for the ultrasound, which I got a few days later. Compared to the mammogram, it was practically painless, although there is something rather embarrassing about lying down with your top exposed, while someone smears your skin with this cold, jelly-like goo-thing. Thankfully, the doctor doing my ultrasound was also female, and I consoled myself with the thought that she has probably done this a thousand times already. I just kept my eyes fixed on the ultrasound screen while she was moving her ultrasound wand around.

It didn't take long. Literally within three or four seconds of her starting the examination, we saw it right away. A clearly defined, somewhat prominent mass which appeared black on screen, clearly visible and obviously not normal breast tissue (normal tissue shows up as gray). Another female doctor had entered the room by then, and I could hear them conferring: "Is it solid? or is it cystic?" The second doctor said, "Not sure. Looks solid," leaving me to wonder silently what the heck those terms meant.

The first doctor used a computer keyboard and mouse to mark off the edges of the black area (I later learned they do that to record its size), then resumed her examination. And right away, they found a second, smaller mass right above the first one. The second mass also showed up as black on screen, clearly visible against a sea of gray. This time the second doctor sounded confident when she said, "cystic".

And so it continued, multiple sweeps of the wand to make sure that no part of the breast was left unexamined. They repeated the procedure on the second breast, and in the process found seven more masses of varying sizes.

While I was changing back to my street clothes, I asked the first doctor, "So, should I be worried?" She gave me a reassuring smile as she shook her head and explained that given the number of masses found, they are more likely to be cystic (which was good) rather than solid (which was bad). I guess the other way to look at it is -- if all nine masses had been cancerous, I would probably have been very sick by now. So this was one of those cases where more is better.

True enough, I received the final report the following day, stating that no further study was needed.

So there it is. Despite all the uncertainty and occassional pain that this experience has brought, I'm glad I followed it through until the end because I came out of the experience knowing more about myself and my own state of health. After all, what's the point of awareness if there is no subsequent action? Knowing, after all, is just half the battle.

Tags: Personal, Health

Posted by CF at 2:05 AM