February 2, 2026 was a Monday. I was lucky enough to have gotten the first appointment of the day and just a few miles from home. I woke up to my alarm blaring and pushing me toward a shower to get this over with. I’d already stopped caffeine 10-12 days earlier and while I’d slipped once, I was looking forward to getting myself a well earned coffee following this appointment.
It wasn’t easy to remember to not put on deodorant like I would, and have done, for decades following a shower. I felt good that 1) I had remembered but only because I kept reciting it like a mantra that whole morning since the alarm screamed and 2) this is “routine”. It’s a screening mammogram and one that I have numerous times; and, I have no family history. Well, unless you count my second cousin once removed who was diagnosed about a year ago. No geneticist considers that a “first line” family member.
I walked into the radiology center and was immediately checked in, and sent back to change “from the waist up” and to put on the gown with the ties in the front.
After the mammogram tech and that blasted machine were done fondling and squishing me, I changed back into my bra and comfy sweatshirt and I was on my way to Walmart. Not that I enjoy Walmart. I usually avoid it at all costs, but they have things that I can’t find anywhere else. Since it wasn’t even 9am on a Monday, I thought the crowds and craziness would be tolerable.
I grabbed the few things that I went into the fifth circle of hell to obtain, checked out, and went back to my vehicle placing my two bags on the seat. After making my way around to the driver’s seat, locked the doors, and started the car, I grabbed my phone. Mmmm, a MyChart notification. “Wow, that was fast” I thought as I clicked on it. “ABNORMAL” screamed out at me. Sigh …
Well, the mammogram technician did go back to my right breast because she didn’t get it all. “Maybe she still didn’t”, I thought.
As I click on the radiology report I see “mass” and “6 mm posterior to the nipple at the 10 o’clock position”. So, like anyone, I get to feeling my right breast there in my car in the Walmart parking lot. Yup, I can feel it, there it is.
Then I get to thinking of all the times over the past year or so that I’ve grabbed the right breast and thought, “God, my boob hurts”. It HAD technically been over two years since my last mammogram. I had moved over a 100 miles from where I’d lived for all of my 50+ years and had just established myself with a PCP in October.
In 2023 I had an abscessed lymph node in the right armpit. A “lump” had been there for a while but it didn’t hurt, until it did. And in 2024 I woke up the day after Thanksgiving with three abscesses under my right breast and one was HUGE. The axillary lymph node abscess was excised emergently and though I did see an NP in the emergency room for the breast abscesses, the large one (quarter size) had ruptured on the way in. The nurse simply looked and said, “well, I don’t have to lance it”.
By the afternoon on February 2nd, I had a voicemail from my doctor’s office that the doctor has placed orders for a “diagnostic mammogram” and follow-up ultrasound.
In 2017 I had a bilateral breast reduction; best thing I ever did! Once you get up into the middle third of the alphabet in cup size, it becomes comical. At just 5’3”, it was like my chest was the same circumference as my total height.
As one does in this age of the Internet, I Googled what to expect with a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound. I was shocked to discover that “About 85% of breast cancers occur in women who have no family history of breast cancer.” (https://www.breastcancer.org/facts-statistics) Sure, sure, age, environment, and lifestyle play a role, but that number seems astronomical. But, still I Googled what to expect and kept clicking links that take me down a rabbit hole of breast cancer information.
Despite the name, diagnostic mammogram, there really is nothing different other than instead of both breasts, they’re just doing the side showing the “abnormality”. Sure, that makes sense. And unlike ultrasounds during pregnancy, a breast ultrasound doesn’t require the Great Lakes worth of water to be ingested!
Emails and MyChart messages come in fast and furious including the “estimate” for this diagnostic imaging. My heart catches as the estimate is a little less than $400. Well, OK, I guess that is why I have a credit card.
MyChart notifies me of my appointments at the “Breast Center” before I get the call. Regardless, it’s been less than 36 hours after a regular screening mammogram, they’re scheduling me for my diagnostic mammogram with ultrasound immediately following “if needed”. I moved from a large metropolitan area to a more rural area so maybe they’re just not as busy and I shrug off the urgency that pervades my thoughts since it’s only been a day and a half. Then they offer, “for my convenience” to take the payment for the estimated co-pay. Um, what!?! It’s a few days before payday and I was going to split the payment between that and my credit card so I politely decline and say that I’ll pay the morning of the test.
I shared my abnormal results with one sister, my son, and a friend and let them know that I’m going to have a diagnostic follow up just one week after the abnormal screening. My sister insists that this is “just scar tissue” from the reduction 9 years earlier. I think to myself, “Um, there is no incision anywhere near this abnormality”.
Research is “my thing”. I am the weird one who enjoyed doing research papers in school and absolutely loved them in college. As the saying goes, “Knowledge is power” so I spent my time before the next appointment just researching any and every thing that comes to mind.
I have no idea what to expect other than what I’ve read. But I also know that no matter how much I’ve researched scholarly articles, Reddit posts, and Google AI Q & A, the outcome is 100% out of my hands.
Mammaries and Beyond 
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