Ultrasound Day
Friday, 30th May 2025
Today was ultrasound day.
I’d asked Mark to come with me, just in case. Neither of us was particularly worried, we were clinging onto the smooth, round and movable comment of the consultant from the initial examination.
However as soon as we walked into the waiting room the nerves came back. What if she was wrong?
The nurse came to get me and said that Mark would have to wait in the main waiting room as men weren’t allowed in the radiography waiting area.
I insisted that I needed him in the room with me for the ultrasound - he’d come all this way and taken the afternoon off work I wanted him with me. The nurse had to check with the radiographer and finally they said he was allowed to join me.
The radiographer took her time and was very thorough, after a while (I’ve no idea how long to be honest) she said she would need to take a biopsy as the lump looked slightly suspicious.
Mark and I looked at each other as if to say ‘what the hell? It was smooth, round and movable - that’s a good lump, how can this be suspicious?’
She took a couple of biopsies and inserted a metal clip into the lump so it could be identified in a mammogram that I would have after the biopsies had been taken.
She said if she knew it was definitely Cancer she wouldn’t be taking a biopsy, but she couldn’t be sure which is why she needed to. I tried to cling onto this fact as something positive.
One other thing the radiographer said which I thought was a horrendous statistic to be told at this point - 95% of suspicious biopsies come back malignant - I thought there must have been a mistake and she meant benign, why would she tell me such a rubbish percentage?!
We asked why the mammogram in December hadn’t picked anything up and she said my breast tissue was very dense and that sometimes means lumps can’t be seen in a mammogram.
I couldn’t believe it - all these years I had been so blazé thinking a mammogram would pick something up 18 months in advance, I’d NEVER believed something could be missed due to my dense breast tissue! There needs to be more awareness of this, I feel like an idiot.
Following the biopsies, I was taken round to sit in the radiology waiting area (without Mark) and there were two young girls there, one in a gown and her friend.
I was unable to hold in my tears and was constantly dabbing at my eyes with a tissue, and the two girls were watching something on TikTok (or similar) and laughing away without a care and completely oblivious to my distress.
I came so close to saying something as they continued to whisper and giggle, but then I got called through for my mammogram.
Obviously in hindsight I was probably being oversensitive, but at the time I was so cross they could be so insensitive - I’d just been told that I potentially had Cancer again and these girls were sitting there laughing at something inane on their phones.
I left the hospital that day so deflated, I’d arrived thinking this would be the end of the road for this little blip and I’d be back to getting on with my life as normal, instead I was filled with worry again.