phoenixswords

Remember when I had a breast biopsy last December? Well I had another 6 month follow-up mammogram at 11:00 this (Friday) morning.

I don’t know if I ever fully wrote up the whole thing. I did post about the second mammogram that led to the biopsy, but I don’t think I ever wrote up the actual biopsy experience. It wasn’t fun.

I’ve been having annual mammograms ever since I turned 40. Mom has had breast cancer, and that means I get to go get the girls squished on the regular. And up until last year, I would not have said that mammograms were painful. Uncomfortable, yes. But the way getting your blood pressure taken is uncomfortable, it’s squeezing, and then a release just before it gets to the point that I’d consider painful.

All that has changed now that they discovered calcifications in my left (sinister) breast in December 2024. That was the trip where they took probably a dozen images of just my left boob. And then said they wanted to do a biopsy (no shit Sherlock, I could see that was coming a mile away.) The area with the suspicious calcifications is low on my breast, about where an underwire bra would hit, and it’s far back in the breast, against the muscle. So getting a good look at the darned thing means that I really have to get jammed up inside the mammogram machine, to get the muscle into the image. And unlike breast tissue, muscles don’t compress. So it always hurts now. And they almost always have to take extra images, because they didn’t get enough chest into the image the first time.

And then there was the biopsy, which is done with you clamped IN the mammogram machine, to hold you still and let the doctor zoom in on exactly where they want to jab the needle. I was fine for the biopsy, they numb you all up with a local. I couldn’t feel the first needle at all.

But then they wanted to put a little marker in my boob so they can track that clump of calcification. (IIRC it’s a little infinity symbol?) And when they stuck me with the needle for the marker I almost jumped off the gurney (remember, my left boob was still clamped TIGHT in the machine!). Apparently they had placed the marker right up against a nerve. And that fucking HURT. They apologized and numbed me again immediately. I’m still a bit peeved that the report writeup says “Pain control was adequate.” Lies, lies I tell you!

And even worse, I can still occasionally feel the damned marker. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s sitting right next to a nerve, so every now and then, depending on how I move, that marker bumps up against the nerve again and I’m aware of this sensation deep in the base of my left breast. That part doesn't hurt, it’s just hella weird.

So, had another mammogram today. And the technician gave me false hope that this might be the last one for a while, she said something about not having to come back if things looked good. But after the doctor looked at the images, we scheduled another mammogram for July. *le sigh* Even though the writeup (which I already have access to via the App) says, “Calcifications in the left posterior breast remain unchanged. There are no other mammographic masses, suspicious calcifications, areas of unexplained architectural distortion, or other secondary signs of malignancy. There are no other significant interval changes. Right breast findings - There are no masses, suspicious calcifications, or other secondary signs of malignancy.

And I keep thinking back to an article I read a couple of months ago in The New Yorker (cheater link to get you past the paywall)

The Catch in Catching Cancer Early
New blood tests promise to detect malignancies before they’ve spread. But proving that these tests actually improve outcomes remains a stubborn challenge.

… false positives abound: tests that suggest cancer where none exists, leading to unnecessary procedures, anxiety, and harm.

In 2021, according to one estimate, the United States spent more than forty billion dollars on [breast] cancer screening. On average, a year’s worth of screenings yields nine million positive results—of which 8.8 million are false. Millions endure follow-up scans, biopsies, and anxiety so that just over two hundred thousand true positives can be found, of which an even smaller fraction can be cured by local treatment, like excision. The rest is noise mistaken for signal, harm mistaken for help.

I can’t stop thinking that these calcifications are a false flag, and I’m going through all this pain for no good reason.