Just had my one year mammo-feels like it never ends

jjprice7611

Just got home from my one year
bilateral mammo (right side done every 6 months). I have not had my left
side mammo done since last May, when I was diagnosed with my right sided cancer.
I so wanted to go in and have them just do a quick mammo and say all looks
great! Well, not so much……

They did the mammo and told me to
have a seat in the waiting room. Pretty standard. I am still having issues on
my right side with a seroma, draining, crusting and now pain that started about
a week ago, so when the tech came back out, saying I needed an ultrasound done
before I leave, based on mammo findings, I was not surprised. I assumed my
right side seroma needed better views and measurements.

I go into the ultrasound room and
the US tech told me that I needed BOTH sides scanned. Huh?! No clue what could
be going on with my left side. She scanned them both and went for the doc. Doc
came in and rescanned each side. The seroma on the right side is still there
and has not shrunk at all. It is going on a year now, so not sure what they
will do about that. For the left side, she said they saw some suspicious areas
on the mammo and needed to take a closer look. Bottom line: they said there is
a new small dense area since last year and some tissue breakdown around it.
There is also a cyst that has formed. Never heard of tissue breakdown around a
dense area, but I guess it happens. News to me. The cyst was strange news,
since my right side had never had a cyst, but suddenly one was there last year,
along with the micros that led to my diagnosis. Now, the left has a cyst (no micros), which
never had before.

It was decided that the new left
side finding are abnormal, but do not look cancerous and that I can wait a year
and check again, unless I start having any issues prior. The right side will
continue to get checked every 6 months.

Granted, I am very glad that
things do not look worse, but still irritating that I now will have it in the
back of my mind for a year, hoping the left side is behaving. I can’t help but
have a bit of doubt since there were no issues on mammos at all prior to today on the
left side, plus last year when they did the biopsies on the right, each step of
the way they kept telling me prior to diagnosis to not worry and that it would
probably all come back negative, which it did not. The issues looked different
since there were microcalcifications at that time on the right and today’s left
side problems are not the same thing (except the cysts), so this could be like
comparing apples to oranges right now. Who knows. Don’t get me wrong, the
clinic is great and I fully trust them, I just don’t trust my own body!