Today I met with the surgeon. He's a great guy. Awesome sense of humor. Oh, and he's a Bears fan, so he can't be all that bad of a person can he?
The first thing I liked about this guy - okay, second (the first being that he's a Bears fan...did I mention that???) is this - he took the time to read the mammo and ultrasound results with me. He didn't review them in his office, he looked them over with me, in the room. He explained what he was looking for, he showed me the difference in dense and non dense tissue, he showed me what was bone and what was tissue. He was very understanding of my non-knowledge on this subject and willing to teach and take the time.
He also had a great sense of humor. I love a doctor that can take something potentially terrifying and put you at total ease. I remember when I was giving birth to my first child - the doctor broke into his impression of the Moose brothers from Brother Bear. His terrible Canadian accent and dumb jokes put me at ease. That's completely what this doctor did for me.
After the reading of the films he told me he'd do an exam and feel for this lima bean himself. (For the record, he's the one that said calling this lump a lima bean was perfect because nobody likes lima beans) I gave him a brief description of where it was, how it felt etc, and it wasn't long before he found our little "lumpy."
A brief - what I can only call "mapping" of the area, a short look at his nurse and he says -go ahead and get dressed and we'll talk.
I laughed - He laughed and left the room.
A few minutes later, he came back in, and announced "You have a breast lump."
"Yep, sure do." What else am I going to say?
"We can do one of two things" - he says.
"We can wait and see, take a watch and see approach, or we can take it out. Taking it out is my proposal. It's up to you. Whatever you want - and a perfectly good reason to have it taken out is just that you don't want to worry about it - but I do reccomend removal."
I'm not a wait and see person. Not to mention, if it could ever possibly be anything potentially deadly - I don't play around with it. I think this lesson came from my parents always teaching me never to play with matches or something.
"When we do take it out it'll come back one of three ways - benign, benign with elevated risk, or precancer/cancer. If it's the latter of the three, we'll meet immediately, set up our war room and hammer out a treatment plan that will work for you. These things are as individual as the people themselves there is no cookie cutter treatment. We will find what we can to work for you. If it's the second category - we'll discuss it at your post op visit. If it's the first category - we'll call you and say It's nothing, you are good."
I'm willing to take it out. He says great - we'll get you scheduled for next week.
More sense of urgency. Or is it caution?
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