Discovery Of Breast Cancer

The symptoms I experienced appeared gradually over the course of several months in the following order: firmness akin to inflammation, red splotchiness in a different location, red orange-peel-like skin in a second location, raised red rash in a third location, and nipple inversion. I never experience heat, itchiness, or pain, although these are common symptoms. Also, I was lactating as my symptoms were developing, greatly confounding and delaying my diagnosis. If you have these symptoms and they are NOT relieved by a course of antibiotics, demand a biopsy. My inflammatory breast cancer was only discovered after I found a surgeon who was concerned enough to do a biopsy.

I felt a lump about a month after I had a routine mammogram that I was told showed nothing suspicious. I ignored the lump for a month, as I’d always had lumpy breasts – I’d actually just said to a friend, “What am I supposed to do? Stop in on my ob/gyn for a quick feel every few weeks?”

It was still there a month later and felt different from past ones (harder. I went for another mammogram. It missed the tumor too (three days before the biopsy that confirmed the 3-cm malignancy). The mammogram did pick up calcifications, so the radiologist ordered a sonogram. He told me on the spot it looked like cancer and to have a biopsy ASAP.

I’d like to close with a few points to consider (which you may already know):

- Digital mammograms miss tumors 40 percent to 60 percent of the time in dense breasts (which most fairly young women have; I was 50 and was told I have dense breasts).
- If you feel something, please pay attention to where it is, and if it doesn’t go away in a few weeks, see your doctor (doesn’t hurt to go in sooner than that). Especially pay attention to if it feels different than previous lumps that were not a problem. Malignancies may be harder; nonmalignancies may move. But not always so. Mine was movable and cancer. I had friend whose very hard lump was an abcess – not “c”. So I think it’s best to get it checked and rule out any guessing.
- If you have dense or fibrous breasts, ask for a mammogram AND ultrasound. Or an MRI. If your insurance company refuses reimbursement, ask your doctor if he/she will give you an order with documentation of why you need this level of screening.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. J

Rachel

I just had a complete physical a month before with no lumps whatsoever, when I felt the lump. I was scheduled for a business trip in the following week and decided to check in when I would be back. Took me 2 weeks to have a dr appt. By then, my lump was the size of a golf ball and my breast was very tender. A week later, I had a mammo, a breast scan, immediately followed by a needle biopsy that confirmed I had breast cancer. It was 4 tumors glued together that formed the lump. I also found out at the same time my lymph nodes were already infected.

Scared doesn't even begin to describe how I felt. Since I was so small breasted that I barely filled A cups, I somehow always believed I was less likely to get such disease... after all I had less breast to attack, right? WRONG!!!

I wasn't a big fan of self exam and usually did it once every few months. Lucky for me I just had physical that confirmed there wasn't anything, otherwise I would have felt even more guilty that I hadn't caught it earlier. That way, I know there wasn't anything I could have done differently. But it hammered home that at any other time of the year, my lack of self exam might have meant a metastatic cancer (Stage 4) instead of the stage 3 cancer I had with the speed it was developing.