Hi everyone,
I have been lurking on this forum for a few weeks now and have found comfort in many of your stories and in the general supportive camaraderie amongs all posters. I’m writing because I have a one-stop breast clinic appointment tomorrow evening to investigate a breat lump. I’m trying to stay calm and control my runaway thoughts but it’s proving rather impossible.
I’m 39 and this is my first breast issue. There is no family history on either side of the family. A couple of weeks ago I felt a lump in the lower part of my right breast, just below the nipple, as I was putting on my bra. It gave me a real shock because it was huge, perhaps the size of a large, slightly flattened grape, and hard. I only needed to brush against that breast to feel it, and I don’t know how I had missed it before. That whole breast also felt firm, engorged, heavy, and pillowy, as if I was about to have my period, which was even more alarming because my period ended about 1 week or 1.5 weeks before I felt the lump. The left breast was normal.
I saw my GP immediately and received a referral to the breast clinic. Since then my right breast has returned to its usual size and feel, though that grape-sized lump is, sadly, definitely still there. The lump is so tender even with the gentlest of pressure. One night, I accidentally slept on that breast and it started throbbing so badly that it woke me up. The throbbing disappeared after taking ibuprofen and it hadn’t returned since. I’ve also limited myself to only examining it once a day, in the morning, with my husband’s help, and there hasn’t really been a change.
The strangest thing about this lump is that the size and feel seem to differ depending on how I’m examining it. One part of it seems to be roughly in the same location all the time, just in the lower corner of the nipple, but the rest of it seems to disappear when I’m lying down. It feels absolutely giant when I’m standing up - it feels like I can grab the whole thing in my hand. I don’t know whether it’s considered mobile or not, but some of it does occasionally escape under my fingers.
I know that there is every likelihood that this is going to be a cyst, or perhaps a fibroadenoma, but equally I know that there is also a chance that it is something more sinister. I guess I will find out tomorrow. Obviously I have Googled and consumed many forum posts. I can find my lump in almost every story, which is simultaneously reassuring and worrying. I’m not a newbie to cancer, having had very thin melanoma on my foot a few years ago. That melanoma was surgically removed and that was the end of the story. Physically, it was a walk in the park, but mentally, it was rough! I’ve been trying to be more in control of my anxiety, and I was doing relatively ok until today.
Anyway, I feel quite a lot better now that I’ve written this all down. If you’ve read this post to the end, thank you. If you’re reading this post because, like me, you are also waiting for a worrying lump to be investigated by the medical experts, then I hope you know that you are not alone. I will most definitely return and update this post with my outcomes.
