Fibrocystic breasts, tamoxifen, and mind games

PurpleCat

Wondering if anyone else had painful/fibrocystic breasts before diagnosis and how tamoxifen is affecting all that.

I experienced breast pain for years before diagnosis, sometimes on one side and sometimes the other. Sometimes it was cyclical and sometimes it wasn't. Mammograms were always clear until the calcifications this past September. A few lumps along the way turned out to be fibroadenomas or cysts. I was told I had fibrocystic/dense breasts, and over the years just settled into an attitude of "well, sometimes they just hurt and it doesn't mean anything's wrong. Stop freaking out about it."

Then, of course, something WAS wrong, over on the left. That's the one that had been more painful in recent months/years. Went through two surgeries and radiation, and now the left doesn't feel great but I assume it's all part of the damage/healing process and ignore it. Now, in the last month, righty seems to have fired up again. Doesn't feel any different than the sensations I've feeling for years that I was told over and over again were related to being fibrocystic, but of course I think about it completely differently now. I guess if cancer is now growing over there, despite the tamoxifen, all I can do is wait for it to become detectable and then deal with it. Or, if the whole idea of tamoxifen is to impact processes going on in the breast, that could cause pain sensations, but I don't really know what to think any more.

Can anyone relate?