BOOB UPDATE...

Well, after a week of sweating bullets, and thinking about giving things away before my premature death of breast cancer at age 60, I got the letter from my doctor and from the radiologist who "read" my mammogram and ultrasound. Simply, the lump is there, but cancer is not indicated. I don't know how they make that determination; 21 years ago (before boob ultrasound), I had found a lump in my other boob. Ada Michaels, the principal of my kids' school, a breast cancer survivor (at the time), came right to me when she heard, and was very supportive as I went in for a lumpectomy. I knew I would come out of surgery missing a lump or missing a boob. Sadly, she has since passed away...way too young, from cancer. Anyhow, I didn't have Ada to lean on this time, and it was scary as hell, and somehow, I don't feel very comfortable relying on someone simply looking at a picture to determine if this is a cancerous lump or not. And while I'm certainly not excited about surgery or needles, I would have thought that the radiologist, just to be certain, would have suggested a biopsy, if not a lumpectomy. I mean, I don't want a year to go by until my next mammogram, have the radiologist read that one, and say, "OOPS!! It WAS cancer...my bad!" My friend Annalee's husband Craig, found a little lump behind his left shoulder blade, kind of near the back of his armpit. He WENT to the doctor, who said it was nothing. A year later, he was still complaining to Annalee about it, and she said, "Then why don't you just go to a different doctor?!" He did, they did some tests, and the NEW doctor said, "You should have been in here a year ago!" It was malignant melanoma, and it had spread throughout his body, and he was dead within three months. So, I have to see my doctor in October, anyhow, for my annual physical, and I guess I will talk to him about this. But for now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. And I've been catching up on the sleep that I lost during those couple of weeks of worrying.