A – Z of Breast Cancer: DIAGNOSIS

I never believed for one moment that I would have cancer. Not once. Not even when, after the mammogram, I had an ultrasound scan followed by an FNA (fine needle aspiration). The fine needle aspiration is a short procedure where they insert a needle into your breast and draw out cells from the lump. It hurts a bit but it’s over fairly quickly. If you have an FNA do not panic. It does not mean you have cancer. It is often used to drain benign cysts. I had cysts. I knew that. They’d told me so a year ago, so while I was nervous about all the poking and prodding I wasn’t really worried.

And then I knew

Just as I was leaving the mammography suite a member of staff held my gaze for too long and I knew. And at that moment everything slowed down and all around the sounds of the busy hospital wing came to me muffled, as if heard underwater. Soon I was being led down a corridor where a nurse glanced at me, a fraction of a second only, then looked at the registrar who was walking alongside me and I saw that they both knew what was coming. I was ushered into a small strategically placed room (you don’t have to walk back through the other patients) and once inside, the slow motion/underwater sound trick stopped.

When three's a crowd

There were three people in the room: The consultant, a nurse and a registrar and I thought, It does not take three people to tell you you are fine. They sat me in front of the consultant who said cancer. As plain as that. As if cancer was something you said everyday. She was very matter of fact and offered no promises. I remember pulling back from her and repeating the word no over and over, like a toddler who has just discovered the ability to assert itself. But no amount of saying no would change the diagnosis. I also cried big fat tears like a toddler. Infantilising business this cancer.

I remember being shocked by the surgeon’s directness and then being grateful. Try not to be upset if you feel your surgeon is being blunt with you. Had mine been less clear I might have left thinking I had something like cancer but not quite cancer, some pre-cancerous nearly-nearly disease. I could have told myself so many lies.

I can't have cancer, I have things to do.

I soon realised that they were wrong. I pointed out to my surgeon that I am a lone parent and I have a young son and I have to look after him, ergo I could not possibly have cancer. But she remained convinced. Then I remembered my mother: Eighty four years of age and having already lost one daughter to a brain tumour. How could I ever tell her? I was sandwiched between two generations of people I could not possible tell this awful thing to.

The breast care nurse

The doctors left and a nurse stayed with me to mop up my tears and prepare me for the next stage. She was called the Breast Care Nurse. Funny. I was crying a good bit and feeling seriously sorry for myself but I still found myself thinking, I bet they don't say the Testicle Care Nurse when it's men's bits they're dealing with. Anyway, this nurse must have done this a lot because she was a mine of information and she really did an excellent job in preparing me for what was ahead. But she had this incredibly ponderous way of communicating that I found distracting. I assumed she’d perfected this at some kind of ‘talking to the distressed’ workshop where they teach you to talk very firmly and v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. And obviously it works because I remember almost every word she said to me even though I was simultaneously impressed and appalled by her slo-mo speech. I wondered did she talk to her husband/boyfriend/same sex partner like this and imagined her asking earnestly what they’d like for tea, ‘there’s a decision to be made here… take your time… no one is going to hurry you… the decision is up to you….’ Probably in real life she talks at normal speed and is really just very good at her job. And God! what a job she had. At one point she had to push me off her as I had literally thrown myself on her and was bawling into her crotch, like a hammy actor in an awful soap. I do freely admit to being an emotional person but I can honestly say that is the first (and I hope the last) time that I have ever physically thrown myself on a complete stranger. I remember thinking, God! what am I doing? but doing it anyway.

Bring your own

They advise you to bring someone with you to these meetings and maybe that is the reason why. If you need a crotch to cry into, bring your own. I however, had come alone and so the nurse kept urging me to ring someone to come and get me and be with me, but I couldn’t see the point in that. Friends were at work, one was on holiday, what good would it do to ruin someone else’s day? But the nurse was persistent and I didn’t want to look like Norman No Mates so I texted a friend forty miles away knowing she would not read the text for hours. I would now advise everyone: Take someone with you even if, like me, you think you are going to be fine. Because eventually, four hours after I’d arrived, I left the hospital as I had come – alone, and I have never felt so lonely in all my life.

Read more at http://breastcancercares.blogspot.com/