My Afternoon

I had my doctor appointment for the lump today. I won't go into tons of details - most of it was pretty boring. I had three straight hours of exams and waiting in between exams. Every person who examined me would feel of it, say "Whoa, I can definitely feel that" and then get a concerned look on their face. It tends to fill one's head with ominous thoughts after a while.

So I had my normal exam by my midwife (the one who was my primary during my pregnancy with Nathan). She enjoyed seeing Nathan again after almost three years, and he was with me all afternoon. I do have to say, he was an amazing little kid. He was so well behaved, he sat quietly, he held my hand, and in the one instance where he couldn't go into a room with me, he sat outside the room waiting patiently for me. He did start to look concerned after a while with so many people examining me, but he was great.

After my first exam, I was sent to have an ultrasound. After that was done, I got to experience my first mammogram. Not a pleasant experience, but I suppose it does what it needs to do. Between all the concerned looks, I got many "You're so young!" comments. The hardest part of the whole afternoon was not having any answers until the very end of everything. So much prodding and poking, and no thoughts as to the possibilities of things. Everyone looked so serious throughout the whole thing and it really weighed heavily on me. I tried to not think about the possible outcomes too much, but on the other hand, it's hard to ignore.

Finally, they came in and said, "There is a sizable mass, but it's benign so we'll see you again for regular mammograms when you're 40."

I suppose that's the answer we needed today. There's no cancer. Obviously it doesn't explain why there's a mass that's been growing for almost a year and it's entirely possible that my doctor will just want to leave it alone. I just may need to learn to live with the pain it's causing and rest easy knowing that it's not going to kill me. I should get the final word for any treatment next week, but I doubt anything further will be done with it.

Thanks for the prayers and the messages of support for today. It was about as emotionally draining as I expected, but at least the outcome is favorable. Now to try to get rid of the tension built up from the day and enjoy some time with my family.