Biopsies Galore

It’s been a loooooong day, unexpected but good.

We were up early for a study ultrasound. They used not one but FOUR machines to do ultrasounds on my right breast. Pretty easy. But then they had me go right away to the lung biopsy.

Now, this is where things got crazy.

Took them a long time to call me in the prep room because a new appointment showed up on my Mayo calendar at 11 (this procedure started at 10). They also ended up calling the folks who were doing my axilla biopsy. Turns out that if I was under sedation for the lung biopsy procedure, they’d have to reschedule the axilla biopsy. Well, didn’t want to do that. So basically I was left with the forced choice of no sedation at all.

The nurses said about 50% get sedation. OK…started to get really nervous. Then I sat there for how long again.

The radiologist who was doing the procedure came in to talk to me about it. Where they had found the spot was at the bottom of my lungs – probably the worst place it could be in the lungs. Your lungs move up and down, so in order to have a successful biopsy, I’d have to “breathe normally” and hold my breath and not try to breathe at all. Oh joy.

Then the possible outcomes – coughing up blood is normal. Maybe the lung would collapse. Those kinds of things.

So I get wheeled into the CT room and they have me on my left side sort of on a pillow. You get sent in and out of the tube. Well, the radiologist comes out and says “we can’t find it.” They made sure by passing me through the CT scanner on my back (like the original PET scan). He came back out to confirm the good news. I couldn’t believe it.

Pretty sure I gave Lindsay a heart attack walking out after she had gotten a text that I was in the recovery room.

We had to go right away over to the derm over in the next building for a punch biopsy – 8mm wide. Yeah. There are four stiches in there so that the wound didn’t expand. Everything was numb for the procedure. Didn’t feel anything besides the initial pinch and then when the doc was sewing up my skin (he’d yank pretty good, which you can feel but it doesn’t hurt).

Then the derm nurses told me I needed to go to my axilla biopsy right away for an ultrasound first. So we went back to that building for more waiting. This one really made me nervous – I’m ticklish there and I couldn’t imagine what getting poked around in there was like.

There were three nurses and two doctors in the room for this one. The doc who did my biopsy was a resident. I could FEEL his hand shaking when he first put the ultrasound wand on my skin. OH LORD. But he ended up doing a fantastic job. The docs and nurses were really nice and joked around with me. The procedure didn’t take very long. I think they took four or five samples and then implanted a little teeny marker so they know which ones to cut off during surgery.

This was followed by a mammogram to show the marker placement.

Nothing hurts (yet) but I’m freaking tired. You spend a lot of time WAITING here. And waiting for things to happen make me nervous. I just wanted someone I knew holding my hand.

I am thankful for the nurses – they really make a difference in how scared or brave you are. They’ve been extremely nice. And a few went out of their way to tell me they had been dianosed with breast cancer and are doing great.

There’s part of me who doesn’t know how I got through today. How I’d get through that damn lung biopsy or stitches in my skin or a fucking needle in my armpit. There might have been a few moments where I was ready to burst into tears. It’s hard to wait and wait for a painful procedure to start. There’s no one there but your thoughts and your fears. But you do it because you have to. It means survival.

Thank you all for your support. It was hard to leave the fam, but having Lindsay with me has been a godsend. Her planning has been so helpful. And it all means I can focus on trying to stay calm and beat cancer. Lots of nurses and doctors are surprised about how much I know and how calm I am about everything and it’s because I have folks who help me. It’s fewer things on my plate so I can just kick ass and get back in the game. It takes so much energy to not scream and cry and wonder why and why you…it means a whole lot to have a village behind me.

All done with appointments until the port surgery on Friday.