I always use my birthday as a reminder to get my annual mammogram. This year I had a strange feeling about it. I remembered things my Mother, a registered nurse, had said after her first mastectomy in 2001. She would say to me about how this or that made sense now that she knew she had breast cancer. She was referring to the increase in hair coming out each time she took a shower, body temperature fluctuations, and increase in psoriasis spots, to name a few.
I started having a lot of the same symptoms after the first of the year but didn't put it together until some time in March. I didn't feel any lumps in my breasts. The lymph glands in my right armpit would be a little enlarged at times but would go back down to normal in a day. The day after my annual mammogram I received a phone call stating there was something they needed to take a closer look at and would I please go in for another mammogram. The second mammogram still showed something so they took me across the hall for a sonogram.
The doctor that did the sonogram informed me there was something definitely there and she proceeded to do a manual to see if she could feel a lump. There were no lumps which stunned her. My biopsy came back positive for cancer.
On April 23rd I had a lumpectomy and 16 sentinel lymph nodes removed for testing. The lymph nodes came back negative and the actual tumor was only 7 cm. I was told I was very lucky as I had Stage I, ductile carcinoma, hormone receptive and did not need chemo. I currently have 8 radiation treatments to go then 5 years of hormone suppressing drugs.
Mom was 69 1/2 with her first mastectomy. I was 4 days shy of my 59th birthday when I had my lumpectomy. We both are proof that mammograms save lives. Please get your mammogram each year!
Latrobe, PA