Cysts or breast cancer

Jmankin

Hello all, I am a wife and mother of two young children. I have been having pain in my left breast since January. Late January I had a mammogram which showed one swollen lymph node. The pain continued to get worse and my ribs on my side and back started to hurt. There are time when I have a burning pain on the side of my breast. And anytime I use my left arm it hurts so bad all on my left side I have to ice it. I called my doctor and he referred me to a breast surgeon.

(I should mention my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer at 47 and died four years later. My sister also had to have Atypical cells removed at 36)

The breast surgeon office ran an ultrasound and found multiple cysts in my left breast and 5 swollen lymph nodes in my armpit. And the first thing he said to me when he walked in the room was "how old are you? " I understand that 33 is young but he didn't even bother to read my file. I had to go over my family history. He said that he's not 100% sure their cysts more like 90% he said he would like to do an mri but doesn't think that insurance would cover it. Ultimately he just said let's wait three months then retest with another mammogram and ultrasound. I called my insurance and they said that the doctors office would have to call to even find out if they would cover the mri in the first place. So I called the surgeons office back and asked them to please call my insurance. They did to find out that they didn't need approval for my insurance so now the ball is starting to roll to get me an mri. Since seeing him a few weeks ago pain has spread up into my left shoulder by my collar bone. Does anyone's else have these symptoms?Why would he say I am not sure if it's cysts, want to do an mrithen ask me to wait three months?

mustlovepoodles

Sorry I'm late to answer you. i don't know why your doctor handled it this way. I would not be happy with his answers. At 33 your breasts are probably quite dense, which makes it very hard to see through on a mammogram. They usually don't even do mammos on younger women, opting instead for US or MRI.

Definitely push back on this. There doesn't seem to be a good reason to wait 3 months on the MRI.

My other suggstion is that you may want to consider having genetic testing, since you're mother was diagnosed so early.