…And The Stress Keeps Coming

When I first left my husband 13 weeks ago, I stupidly assumed that that would be the most stressful part, both moving so far away and living on my own for the very first time, and processing everything that had happened, and accepting how bad things had gotten, and that I couldn’t have done any more than I did to save our marriage. Oh how wrong I I turned out to be. What I did not anticipate however, was that just a couple of days after moving to this 2nd refuge flat, I would discover a suspicious lump in my right breast. From this point on, said lump will be referred to as “the boob grape”. This is the name it has been christened with. Anyway, as you might imagine, I called the Dr’s surgery the next morning as soon as they were open. The receptionist asked if I felt I needed to speak to a Dr urgently, so I explained the situation, and she told me she’d get a Dr to call me back ASAP. ASAP in this case turned out to be 7 minutes. Impressive by anyone’s standards. I actually managed to speak to the Dr whom I had been registered with, and once again I explained what I had felt the night before. She asked me to immediately come down to the surgery, and she’d take a look. Walking into a socially distanced waiting room was a bizarre experience. Usually there are chairs all around the room, or in rows filling up the waiting room, but to minimize the potential spread of the virus, almost all of the chairs had been removed, and the 6 or so remaining chairs had been spread out a lot further than 6ft/2m apart. I was only sat waiting for a few minutes before being called in to see the Dr. My Dr turned out to be lovely. She is kind, caring, she listens, and is professional without making you feel inferior, which sadly in my experience, not many doctors manage to do. I explained my family history briefly, and told her that my Nan and several of her sisters had had breast cancer, although much older than I am now. She asked me to strip off my top half and lay on the examination table. She thoroughly checked my right breast, including checking under my arm, and then examined the left breast to compare. As soon as she actually felt the right boob grape, and immediately adopted what I like to call the “professionally cardboard like face”, where they show no emotion whatsoever. I have to hand it to her, from our brief chat she worked out that because of all my other conditions, I’m fairly well up on dealing with doctors, and know when they are trying to fob me off or bullshit me, and she didn’t even attempt to, she just gave it to me straight. She told me that she was very concerned because the lump is very hard, very deep and doesn’t move. Cysts are usually softer, much closer to the surface of the skin, and more able to be manipulated. She said she would refer me to the breast clinic for tests straight away, but that she had no idea how long it would take for me to get an appointment, give the current pandemic situation. Sadly for my anxiety, it took 5 weeks for me to hear from them. Five very long, very anxious, very stressful weeks. Weeks where my emotions and moods would be on the biggest roller-coaster that was ever built. I was all over the place, one minute I was fine, very matter of fact about it, “It is what it is, I just want to know either way, so I can either just move on, or draw up a treatment plan”, to “OMG this is it, it must be really bad if even the GP is seriously concerned, I may as well just walk to the river and jump. Get it over and done with now.” I have very friends left thanks to my husband, but the few that do remain were seriously concerned about my mental state many times. After 5 weeks though, I did get a phone call from the breast clinic, and asked me to attend the clinic on the 4th June. It was yet another week to wait, between the phone call and the appointment. How I got through that week, I don’t know. I was a mess. However, Thursday 4th June rolled around, and after a completely sleepless night, I got a taxi to the hospital. When I walked into the hospital, I had my temperature taken and asked if I’d been out of the country in the last 2 weeks, and when my temperature came back as normal, I was allowed to carry on into the main hospital. I was surprised how many shops were open in there. I’m used to a hospital having a gift shop and a cafeteria, but this one had a couple of charity shops that weren’t open, and then a WH Smith, several different food places, depending on what you wanted to eat, and for the first time in my life, I saw a HAIRDRESSERS in a hospital, however it was being refitted and not currently open. I guess this is the time to do it, if they’d been planning to do it for a while. I found the clinic easily enough, although as per usual, the clinic I needed was right at the very end of the main corridor. When I entered the clinic I was asked to go and sit in this little section they had created, and a nurse came out to take my temperature again as well as ask more questions, one of which was the same one I’d entered at the entrance of the hospital. When she asked if I’d been out of the country in the last 2 weeks, I replied “I’m 33, I haven’t been out of the country since I was 21!” She had a laugh at that and told me that I “should be safe on that score, then” I was only sat in the waiting room for about 10 minutes. Like the Dr’s surgery, most of the chairs had been removed, and the handful that remained had been spread out giving you more than 6ft between chairs. When I got called to see the Dr, once again he checked both breasts, then told be to get dressed and go and sit in a different waiting room, and wait for the sonographer to do an ultrasound. Again, it was only a few minutes wait before I got called in. I got undressed from the waist up for the second time, although this time I was given a piece of paper towel to cover my left breast, whilst they scanned the right one. In general, the ultrasound was okay, although she did press the wand in as hard as she could, to scan as deeply as she could, seeing as the lump was so deep. I wouldn’t say it hurt, it was more like a deep ache, seeing as she was digging it into my chest wall. What WAS painful however, was when she dragged the wand straight over my nipple, somehow managed to get the wand caught on the piercing, and damn near ripped my nipple off! I’m not completely certain, but it’s possible that I levitated above the table for a second. I even emitted a tiny squeak, which is almost unheard of from me. I am happy to sat however, my nip still remains in place, as does the piercing. I’m grateful that it wasn’t removed in the most painful way possible. After that, because strangely enough the ultrasound showed that there is indeed a boob grape there they decided to do the biopsy there and then. That was much less painful than nearly having my nip ripped off. Once I was finally dressed again, they told me to go back and sit in the waiting room, and the Consultant would see me again before I left. The consultant told me that he was going to refer me for genetic testing, considering my age and family history, and then told me that this was the first clinic they’d run since we all went into lockdown, and that the lab had a backlog of biopsies to biopsy………….And that it could take up to 6 weeks for me to get the results. So here I am, 6 days into the potential 6 week wait, and none the wiser on what the boob grape actually is. At this point in time, I’m hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. If it turns out that it is the “Big C”, I will beat it into submission. I haven’t come all this way, moved 400 miles with just a suitcase and my dogs, to be beaten by a boob grape!!