After the mammogram and ultrasound, my next appointment was with the breast surgeon to have a biopsy.
On November 11, I went in for the appointment. She did a quick exam, and then it was biopsy time.
My breast surgeon explained exactly what would be happening, but I was still pretty nervous. She first injected me with a numbing solution, which burned and stung a lot. That was probably the most painful part of the whole thing.
Then she made a small cut, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the biopsy needle.
OMG. It was HUGE.
She had to hold it with both hands!
I could feel tons of pressure and pulling. I was getting more and more uncomfortable and starting to feel a lot of pain and burning. I was tearing up. It hurt so bad. I guess I looked scared because one of the nurses reached out to me and said, “Hold my hand.”
Yes, please.
The biopsy needle made this loud grinding sound, and I just kept wishing the whole thing would be over.
Afterward, she had to take samples from the lymph nodes in my left armpit. The numbing shots in that area hurt like hell.
I watched her squeeze the samples onto slides. They kind of looked like jelly.
And then I was done!
She put surgical tape over the little cut and told me not to take it off until the next time I saw her.
When I got into my car afterward, I broke down and started crying.
As I was driving home, someone honked at me because I guess the light had turned green. I was just sitting there, still in shock from what had happened to me.
Over the next week, while I waited for the results, I was pretty sore from the biopsy. It was such a tiny cut, but I could hardly move my left arm. Even simple things like washing my hands or putting my hair into a ponytail hurt because I could feel the incision pulling every time I moved my arm.
I’m such weak sauce.
This was only a little cut. I couldn’t even imagine what having real surgery would be like.
On November 18, I went back to get my biopsy results.
My breast surgeon walked into the room and told me:
Unfortunately, the tumor is cancerous.
I had invasive ductal carcinoma, the most common type of breast cancer.
She explained that all of my receptors were positive, including HER2, and that HER2-positive breast cancer can be aggressive, which could explain why the tumor had grown so quickly. The lymph node biopsy had also come back suspicious, so that would need further evaluation.
She recommended chemotherapy first to shrink the tumor and told me that HER2-positive tumors can respond really well to a drug called trastuzumab.
At that point, though, I was having some kind of out-of-body experience.
I wasn’t really hearing what she was saying anymore.
Especially after:
You have cancer.
She reached for a tissue and told me she was surprised I wasn’t crying because most of her patients had started crying by that point.
I think I was just in shock.
Even after everything that had happened—the mammogram, the ultrasound, the suspicious mass, the biopsy—some part of me had still believed that maybe, somehow, I would get lucky.
Afterward, I met with the nurse coordinator to go over everything. I gave a saliva sample for genetic testing, and we started scheduling a breast MRI, PET scan and my first appointment with the oncologist.
When I left the office, I felt incredibly sad.
I still couldn’t believe the news.
I actually have cancer.
And this is my life now.
