I turned 45 and got my letter in the mail from my GP for my free boob squash. I could have been one of these woman who looked at the letter and thought, I will get round to this one day, put the letter down and forgotton about it, but I am pretty vigilant when it comes to my health.
I was about to take my mum on a cruise from Auckland to Sydney and thought, ok, I dont want any bad news so I will book in for my mammogram after the trip. 4 days after returning, I went and had it done. The radiologist that did it said sometimes on your first mammograms they will do a call back just to double check, so if I did get a call, not to worry.
Two weeks after, sure enough I got a call to go back as they wanted to recheck things. Went in and had a hand job (excuse the expression), another mammogram and a scan. They reviewed these and I was then advised that I needed to have 2 biopsy's, one of each breast. I opted to have these both done at the same time so went back 2 days later and had both biopsy's done at once. The results of these were, the right breast was fine, nothing to worry about but the left had DCIS, but, there was another area in the left breast they wanted to do another biopsy on. This also came back as DCIS.
As I had DCIS in two places the area that had to be removed was around 4.5cm but with cancer they always take a wider path to esnure they get it all. This area then turned into a 6.5cm area which was out of their limit that they will do for a partial removal. I was then told that my only option was a full mastectomy of the left breast.
Within 3 weeks of hearing this news, I was in having a mastectomy and reconstruction. Lymph nodes were clear so no radiation or chemo required thank goodness.
Auckland, New Zealand