A Delayed Screening, a Breast Cancer Diagnosis, and Membership in a New Club

The news, part 1
Twelve days later, I was back for the Mammotome. In this relatively new procedure, a probe is inserted into your breast through a small incision and guided to the suspicious area. Tissue samples are vacuumed out and sent for analysis. It’s as much fun as it sounds, which is to say not much.

I lay facedown on an elevated table, my breast positioned through an opening and held immobile by mammogram-like paddles. The radiologist had told me that I would adjust to the pressure within minutes, and sure enough I did. But the effort of holding still for 20 minutes or more as the probe snaked precisely through my tissue left me weary. Even so, I went to my freelance job, and that's where I was the next morning, when my radiologist called to say that she'd found LCIS in the sample.

Lobular carcinoma in situ, or LCIS, she explained, is an indicator that I was at high risk to develop an invasive breast cancer. Though at one time the condition was usually treated aggressively with mastectomy, the current wisdom holds that, for most patients, the better course is to monitor the disease with mammograms and to reduce the chances of developing cancer with a hormone drug therapy.

“You'll probably need to be on tamoxifen,” she said. “But in the meantime, you definitely need a surgical biopsy. We have to make sure that there isn't anything more to this.” She had already scheduled an appointment for me with the surgeon who'd removed the lumps from my breasts 15 years ago.

Hold on. Wait. LCIS? Another biopsy? As my brain slowly worked through this information, my cell phone rang. On my office phone, the radiologist was explaining that a wider sampling was needed to be sure that no cancer cells had begun to develop. On my cell, the surgeon's office was asking for a fax number to send some paperwork that was needed back immediately. I thought my head would explode.

As I scurried around looking for a fax machine, I got frantic. No, not frantic, angry. I was pissed. Was this some sort of cosmic joke? How much was I supposed to handle? My heart still ached from the buffeting it had recently taken, and now this assault on my breast?

It already bore a faint scar from my 1993 procedure, plus the new wound from the Mammotome, as small as that was. I didn't want to mar it again. I love my breasts. Frankly, they’re among my best assets. The idea of slashing open one of them made me nauseated, especially since I was convinced it would be for nothing. It was nothing in 1993; it would be nothing now.