Eighteen months ago Elizabeth found a lump. It wasn’t too big and she was nursing Jonathan at the time so we didn’t think too much of it because she had clogged ducts prior, but got it looked at anyway. She had an ultrasound done and they told us it was nothing and that it just looked like inflamed glands from nursing.
Fast forward another nine months and she was pregnant again (oops, my bad). Because of that the lump issue seemed to grow but figured it was from being pregnant because, well, everything gets bigger when you’re pregnant. In that process we decided to get it looked at again just in case. Same story… it is nothing.
Judah made his appearance a few months later and then we started to see issues. She wasn’t able to nurse on the right side where the lump was that now covered at least a quarter of her breast. So we saw lactation specialists who said we needed to see a breast surgeon. The surgeon quickly ordered a mammogram which Elizabeth had done last Friday, October 1st.
For my folks out there who have not played sports in high school, the first week of most sports is usually super intense and often called hell week. That is what this last week has been for us. Unfortunately there is no fun game at the end of pre-season for us. The mammogram she had done started that week off. She went in thinking we were looking for something weird and NOT cancer. The ultrasound techs before were so sure in their statements at the other place that it was nothing to worry about.
The first scan was done on the right side that had the lump but they wanted to look at the left to have a comparison image. By the end of the visit they had scanned three areas with the mammogram and did an ultrasound on her armpit lymph nodes. Results showed a concerning mass on her right breast, calcification spots on her left and an irregular lymph node, a triple whammy for signs of breast cancer. Tuesday the 5th she was in to biopsy all three spots, and Thursday morning October 7th Elizabeth was diagnosed with invasive ductal carsonoma, breast cancer.
Breath deep. Cry a lot. Let the testing begin…