The Results Are In!!!

I hadn’t posted about this over the summer when the saga began but I am feeling the urge to share the story with all of you today.

Back in May I went for my annual breast MRI on my one good boob. I was as usual stressed out to the max. It is a banner day down at Sloan with the MRI in the morning, then off to Mammo, then in to see the doc. I have to say, instinctively I had an icky feeling going into this test. I found out while I was waiting to get called into my mammo that the radiologist saw a small 5 mm area of enhancement on the MRI. All my scans over the past 5 years have been clean. So you can well imagine where my head ran off too! As I sat there with my doc I could feel the blood draining from me and I thought I would faint. She said that he was 90% sure that it was nothing but wanted to do an ultrasound. So they ushered me off like cattle and before I knew it I was laying on a table with cold gel being dumped onto my boob as flashes of my past bout with cancer flew through my head. Nothing showed up on the ultrasound, and my mammo came back normal. The radiologist wanted to do an MRI guided biopsy to be sure. The problem with breast MRI is that there are alot of false positives. Of course they couldn’t be sure that I was one of those. What the f***! How could I possibly be back in this place of total darkness again I thought to myself. Would I lose another breast? Would I die this time? This news came only a month after my dad’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis. This couldn’t be possible.

I had to wait 3 weeks to get the biopsy done which is totally unacceptable! Even after many phone calls to my doc there was still no way to get me in sooner. During those three weeks I came down with an awful cold…..there’s no big surprise! All the stress knocked me on my ass! For anyone out there who has ever had a biopsy in an MRI machine you will understand me when I say it was freakin barbaric! I can barely stand to be on my stomach in that machine for the scan never mind being jabbed and cut into from underneath like I was a car up on a mechanic’s lift at a garage!

Before I knew it the waiting game ensued. I got an email the following nite from my doc (who was in Alaska on vaca btw) telling me that it was benign and most likely a fibroadenoma. I began to cry and felt this huge weight being lifted off my shoulders. That is until the next day when I got a call from the radiologist. She rained on my little parade when she told me that it actually was a fibroepithelial lesion with differential for phyllodes tumor or fibroadenoma. Translation please! Essentially although it was benign a phyllodes tumor can change down the road and they can grow fast. The radiologist told me that she would recommend surgery to remove it. As I felt the darkness creep in again I wondered why I didn’t hear this from my doc? As I googled phyllodes tumor I was even more scared. When I finally heard from my doc she said that her reason to remove it would be to make it easier to read my scans in the future in case there was growth. She said that it was in no way a malignancy but in my head I wondered why remove it? Why not wait to scan again and see if it did get bigger? Why rush in with the scalpel?

She told me to let her know when I would feel comfortable doing this. To tell you the truth I was never going to feel comfortable. I had my checkup with my oncologist who suggested we do another MRI to see if there was any growth. If there was it should come out, if not just watch it.

So after many insurance mixups with preauthorization (that stuff is for another post!) I finally had the scan 2 days ago on Tuesday. In the meanwhile I have been getting more rigid with my diet, my daily juicing, daily Quigong exercise and my attempts at meditation (which is really dam hard for me to do!) I have even been exploring raw food. I couldn’t help but wonder if all that would help it stay stable or better yet make it dissolve. I have yet to blog more about this as I am a big believer in nutrition and the power of the mind to heal. I will be bloggin more about it in the future.

At any rate this morning I emailed my doc and the results are in!! The scan showed that the lesion is “no longer present”! I have my titanium clip in there and that is all they saw. I couldn’t believe it. It was better than I had hoped for. Even better, now no surgery! We will continue to follow it on my scans. I feel such a sense of relief as well as empowerment. I followed my instincts, didn’t feel comfortable with surgery for something benign and so tiny without even waiting to see what it was doing in there. I believe that all of my holistic stuff chased the little bugger right out of my boob. I will continue to do all of my crazy diet stuff as well as destressing exercise to keep it the hell away! This showed me proof of the fruits of my labor…..

It gave me power……and I believe that power can kick fear in the ass!