For those of you that don't talk to me very frequently, you may be wondering where I have been. Or perhaps just assuming that we have had a really boring month or that my camera was broke. But the truth is we have been very preoccupied. To ease the readers, I will start with the finish, neither tumor is cancerous.
The week before Christmas I woke up with an itch "bug bite" on my right chest. I had scratched it silly thru the night and it was a bloody itchy mess. So I grabbed the hydrocortizon and a band-aid and itched my way thru the day. A rash began around it. It doubled every couple of days. At the same time a pain in the center of my right breast began. A couple of days later an orange size swelling in my right underarm. At this time the rash is the size of my palm and my boob is killing me.
So the day after Christmas, I went for a mammogram. Oddly the tech had more questions about the rash than my breast pain. So of course I had to google "breast rash" when I got home. And there it was a rare breast cancer called inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) --- manifests itself with a rash, swollen lymph nodes, severe itching. Prognosis --- very bad spreads in weeks to other parts of the body and most don't make it past 2 years. Fright!
So my OB is a great friend of mine, so i texted him and he said get in first thing Monday morning. The mammogram came back with lump in the rigth breast the size of a walnut. So back to the hospital for more mammograms and ultrasounds. Great news, the tumor "broke up" after a devil machine smashed the heck out of it and only a tumor the size of my thumb is left. And traditionally a tumor that breaks up then it is non-cancerous. So a follow-up in 3 months to watch it and hopefully it will be gone.
But everyones attention was still on that rash that would not go away - not with cortizon, not with fungus cream, not with a strong antibiotic. The reason being IBC does not usually have tumors (I wish more woman would know this!) So off we go to a breast specialist for a biopsy. Good news, she says the rash is not in the pattern of a IBC and she is fairly certian it is not IBC. But what is it then? To the top of the rash is a tiny white spot, I assumed it to be the "bug bite". This is what she chose to biopsy.
By the next morning, the rash is gone and the lympnode shrunk! Praise be to God. Great news! Yesterday I get the call, not IBC (yeah!), not a bug bite (really?) but a non-cancerous tumor in a my nerve ending. She gave me some technical term, but I will have to get it from her in writing as I have already forgotten it! But she did say it was just a fluke, and nothing to worry about.
So.... two tumors and neither are cancerous - I don't know why God is so good to me but this was a fright that neither David or I will every forget. It has changed our outlook on what are priorities really are in life. I expect that this experience has set us in a new direction for us and our family.
Keep me, God, for in You I take refuge.
