BIRAD4-B & Abnormal MRI

I'm sorry you've got to go through the uncertainty. With BIRADS4-B, at least there's still a very decent chance you won't have cancer found on the biopsy, but waiting sucks, and what the heck telling you not to "lose sleep" - what exactly would they suggest you do?

This is a sidebar: If the results were benign it was not a "lumpectomy," it was an "excisional biopsy." That may seem picky because the procedure itself is essentially the same, but the context for the patient is very, very different.

It's hard for them to know what to say when they can't say anything with any certainty. They don't want you feeling as if you were just diagnosed with cancer - that's bad enough when a person does have cancer, but it would be horribly cruel and twisted to put someone through hearing that news if there were a good chance it weren't true. On the other hand, they're worried enough that they don't want you to blow off having it checked into.

So they screw up if they lean too far either way. It's the process of waiting that really plays the mind games - what I wish is that everyone who needed a biopsy could just have what I had, which was a radiologist who walked in from his reading room and did the biopsy. I still had to wait a few days for the pathology report, but overall it was a compressed period of time.

Well, my biopsy was a long time ago and it just occurred to me that without the footnote about my diagnosis there's no way to know that. I had cancer, but then the radiologist knew it and I knew it - it was just so, so ugly on the mammogram and ultrasound, which were done the same day because I'd felt a lump. I'd had a clear mammogram 8 months prior, and the cancer took up a huge portion of my breast on the mammogram done at the time of my diagnosis. I've never even seen that mammogram report, since the biopsy was done the same day that's all I cared about. So it's a very different story than yours. But the waiting - well, that's there at so many steps and is such a torture. When I went in for an appointment because of the lump, I was seen by both a nurse midwife and an OB/GYN, the first of whom said "this is concerning" and the second of whom said "well, this isn't concerning."

I think I drank a bunch of wine during the days waiting for the mammo and ultrasound.

Honestly, I'm doing great, especially considering I had a big, aggressive cancer. I was 44, but my son had turned two just 3 weeks before I was diagnosed, and my daughter was not three (had to have them close to together because I was old).

Will your doctor be able to access the path report as quickly as you will? It may be easier hearing any news, good or bad, from someone who is familiar with the terminology. Medical words that mean entirely harmless things can be terrifying if they are unfamiliar.

Hi

My Radiologist just gave it a Category 4 - Suspicious, nothing more than that, wonder why. She did say she thought it was benign and for me to not worry but that's like saying nothing to me at that point because all I'm seeing is a BI-Rads Category 4 - Suspicious over and over again. Hope your biopsy goes well and it's nothing. Mine is Tuesday. Good vibes are going your way!!!!