October 19: Discovery

Another question from Facebook.

How was it found? - Cathy

 Not by a mammogram, I can tell you that. I first found it when I was on my way back to my car from a funeral, with my arms crossed over my chest against the cold. There was a spot on my breast that started aching, and when I put my hand over it, I thought I felt a lump. But it was hard at the moment to be sure of what I felt with the density of the tissue and the body reacting to the cold.

I couldn't find it again later, so I forgot about it. I noticed it again when my breast started itching, and I realized there was a small lump inside that felt painful and itchy. That was exactly the case when I had a cyst in my late teens, in almost the exact same location on my other breast, so I didn't think anything of it at first.

It seemed to come and go along with my hormonal cycle, sometimes disappearing altogether as far as I could tell during certain points. While I still had health coverage for a bit of time during this period, the lump was not always present. Taking into account the pain, the itching, and the come-and-go nature of the lump, it seemed far more likely that it was benign. Keep in mind too that I was several years shy of 40 at this point.

By the time it was more persistent, I no longer had medical coverage, and couldn't afford a trip to the doctor, let alone any tests they might want to run. So it remained a cyst in my mind, and I just had to wait for it do like the other one did, rupture and drain on its own. I finally found a medical provider who I could afford while I was on worker's comp due to an injured wrist, and went in to have it drained.

That's when I found out that with a detectable lump, I qualified for the state's Every Woman Matters program, even though I wasn't yet 40. I had looked over the website time and again in the past and there was nothing to indicate to me that it would cover the cost of the biopsy and follow-up if I had a lump even if I was under 40. That would have been a game-changer, for me.

I didn't have a mammogram until the age of 39, after the cancer was already diagnosed, and even then, the mammogram on my right breast was so inconclusive due to the density of the breast tissue that they had to resort to an ultrasound to verify that there were no lumps present. That same day, I had a PET scan. A follow-up biopsy to my liver a few days later confirmed what the PET scan indicated. It had already metastasized.