The last thing that you want to hear from your OB at 5 months pregnant is "It might be cancer or it might be nothing. Let's send you to the radiologist."
And that about sums up the last week and a half of our lives.
Backtrack to about three weeks ago to a night like any other night, I sat on the couch marveling at my newly found boobies (which were my first symptom of pregnancy and what prompted me to take a test in the first place) when I felt something. A small node, the size of a lentil sat embedded in my right breast.
For a few days I didn't say anything to anyone. I thought that it was probably my imagination and a normal part of the changes that accompany pregnancy. I did a bit of Googling and diagnosed myself with a possible blocked milk duct. But if I was being totally honest with myself, did I really even know where milk ducts were located? How deep in the breast did they reside? Could they even get blocked this early on? I couldn't really tell from the anatomy pictures and info that came up in my search.
A few days passed and I could still feel the node. Because of the history of breast cancer in my family, I didn't want to alarm anyone if it was nothing. But I was also to the point where I was growing more concerned by the day. So I asked John to take a look, and yup, he could definitely feel the lump. Damn. It wasn't all in my head.
We decided to bring it up with my OB at our upcoming 18 week anatomy scan. The scan went perfectly. Baby had two arms, two legs, a developing brain, all the chambers of the heart, and the spine looked good. Afterwards we met with the doctor and he asked if we had any additional questions. So I took a deep breath and told him about the lump that I found.
Let me stop here and say how I saw this appointment playing out in my head: I thought that the doctor would do a breast exam and tell me that it was absolutely nothing and that it was just a normal part of pregnancy. Or even better, I thought that he would tell me that he couldn't even feel the lump.
This is what really happened: The doctor did a breast exam and felt the lump right away. He then asked about the history of breast cancer in my family and because of all of those factors, he immediately referred me to a breast cancer radiologist. He said it may be nothing. Or it may be something, and he didn't want us to miss anything.
So we left that appointment elated that our baby was healthy, but overwhelmed with the fact that I would have to get worked up for possible breast cancer. After everything that we've been through in the last year, this was NOT what we wanted to be thinking about. We wanted to be happy and celebratory about our baby, not worried about possible cancer.
It took about five days for the radiology referral to go through and for my appointment to be scheduled. Coincidentally, my mom had planned to visit me last week while John was traveling out of the country for work. So our week of shopping for nursery items turned into a week of shopping for nursery items and also going back and forth to the hospital for breast scans and a biopsy. Good times.
Walking into that biopsy appointment at the cancer center with my pregnant belly was one of the most emotionally wrecking things I've ever gone through. It just all felt wrong. The hospital staff was so kind and accommodating. But being congratulated on your pregnancy and then told to lay down so the radiologist could numb you with a long thick needle and cut out samples of a lump inside your breast was just surreal.
Because my biopsy appointment was on a Friday, the results took a few days to come back.
But finally, I received a phone call this morning with good news: My test results came back negative.
The lump was something called Psuedoangiomatous stromal hyperplasia (PASH), a benign mass that can mimic cancer.
Thank God Thank God Thank God. I am so incredibly relieved and so incredibly grateful that we know it's benign and nothing to worry about.
So why am I sharing this? Because I want anyone reading this to be aware of this condition. I want to encourage you to perform self breast exams (even during pregnancy!) and to speak to your doctor if you feel anything different in your breasts. As my doctor and radiologist said, this could have been something. And from everything that I've read, finding lumps during pregnancy is even more concerning because the high levels of hormones could possibly help cancerous cells proliferate even faster. The sooner you know, the sooner you can take action.
