Catia Bitching Cancer

I was sitting outside sipping my morning espresso and stretching. Bruce and Sandro were still asleep. The previous day had been really intense and enjoyable. We had been with our ‘commune’ (the three/four families that are always doing things together) at Crystal Cove State Park Beach and boogy surfed. I got a lot of beatings from those big waves, but we all had a terrific time. So, I was sitting and stretching and scratching and while I scratched I found a lump in my left breast. I jumped up, waked Bruce to check it out. The following day, a Monday (it was August 27th 2006 when I found the lump, three days after my 41st birthday), I scheduled an appointment with the breast clinic at Kaiser for the following Friday (September 1st). On Tuesday, as I was telling my friend Lauren about the discovery (hence the first ‘D’ in the title of this post), I discovered another lump. As I learned later the first lump was located at 5 o’clock (think of a breast as a clock, as you look at it), the second at 6 o’clock, more or less both then in the lower outer quadrant of my left breast.

To make a long story short, the nurse appointment confirmed through breast exam that I did indeed have two lumps. She tried to aspirate them in the hope that they were cysts. Nope, they weren’t. So she scheduled a mammo and ultrasound. She told me the radiologist might also perform a biopsy. The appointment was for September 18th.

On that day, I had a mammo taken, then an ultrasound, then the radiologist came in and confirmed he had seen the two lumps on both the mammo and the US, and told me he was going to go ahead and perform an US-guided, needle core biopsy on both sites. He also told me he wanted to schedule a mammo-guided stereotactic biopsy for other sites that showed suspicious microcalcifications. The biopsy was no big deal, he put in titatium clips to be able to locate the biopsied sites in the future, then had me take another mammo and set an appointment for the stereotactic biopsy for Oct 2nd, bumping the appointment with the surgical clinic to Oct. 6th.

On Monday, Sept. 25th I learned by phone the results of the first biopsy. I was diagnosed (hence the second ‘D’) with infiltrating ductal carcinoma, grade 2 (NOT stage 2, grade is a histological classification of the appearance of tumor cells, not an indication of how advanced the cancer is). One of the lumps is partially a Ductal Carcinoma in Situ, which is a good sign, but it is only partially so and the other is entirely infiltrating. The two sites are relatively small, each between 1 and 1.5 cm. in diameter. This is basically all the information I have at the moment.

The other biopsy on Oct 2nd could not be performed, because after I was prepped and everything was ready and about to start, the first mammos showed that the suspicious microcalcifications were located too close to the skin to be able to perform the stereotactic biopsy.

On Ocotber 6th, the nurse reviewed all results with me, gave me a range of possible treatment scenarios, and set an appointment up with a surgeon, herself a cancer survivor, for Oct. 11th. I will see the surgeon tomorrow at 9:15 am.

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