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How scan shock and fear turned to tears of joy
BY ANGELA KELLY26/10/2006
Regular breast screening can identify cancer-producing cells at their very earliest - as Metro News' Angela Kelly discovered...
THE timing for the letter recalling me for a further mammogram
test could not have been worse - I was about to go into hospital
for a hip replacement the next day.
So, it wasn't until two weeks later, and on crutches, that I went
along to my local hospital's breast unit. The consultant was kind
but firm: they had found calcified cells in my right breast and
needed to do a needle biopsy of the affected area. Shock and tears
followed.
A local injection was used under mammogram conditions once more. It
wasn't painful, just uncomfortable. The worst thing was the wait of
10 days but, as I later realised, it was inevitably all about
waiting.
My imagination went into overdrive as I considered all the worrying
words -lumpectomy, mastectomy, radiotherapy, chemotherapy. In the
event, it was one I hadn't tried that frightened me most:
carcinoma. I had ductal carcinoma in situ, an enclosed change in
cells near the milk duct, that could develop into full-blown cancer
if left.
"Congratulations!" said the consultant. "You had a mammogram." In
other words, I had given myself a better chance of beating
cancer.
But the hip operation had needed a large amount of anaesthetic so I
could not have the operation quickly. I had to wait at least six
weeks. In the event it was two months.
This wasn't a nice time, and without my supportive husband,
daughters and friends I can't imagine how I would have got through
it.
Sadly, some people could not deal with a friend with cancer so kept
their distance. I just concentrated on getting fit for the next
operation.
After all, as a journalist I had interviewed many people in far
worse situations. I would get through it, and I did. To enable the
consultant to find cells as tiny as grains of sugar, I first had to
go to the breast unit to have a guide-wire inserted behind the
rogue cells. Like the biopsy, a local anaesthetic meant no
pain.
But the sight of a long piece of wire coming out of my breast was
surreal. In fact, my husband and I couldn't stop laughing at the
possibility of better Radio 2 reception!
The operating theatre was next. I stayed in hospital for a couple
of days but the only really traumatic part was the next day when I
looked under the wound-covering to see a large dent in my breast
where the surgeon had had to remove flesh. I really wasn't prepared
for that.
Funnily enough, though, the more I looked at it the less upsetting
it became. By the time the drain was taken out a day or two later,
I was starting to adjust.
There was another worrying wait of 10 days while the cells were
analysed and then back to the hospital. Would I need further
surgery or a mastectomy (removal of the breast)? Would I have to
have a course of radiotherapy and then drugs like Tamoxifen?
We had tickets to go to New Zealand to see our daughter and
grandchildren in a month or two, and this was beginning to look
doubtful.
But, the news was good. Remarkably good. They had got all the
cells. In fact, the original biopsy had removed some of them. I did
not need further surgery, treatment or drugs - except to go on a
drugs' trial.
Tears of joy were now the order of the day. I had been reprieved.
And all because I had taken a routine mammogram.
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