Mammo tech with a spiculated mass and microcalcifications

I'm not a medical technician of any type but due in part to my profession and some basics I had learned about breast ultrasounds the night before my second scan, I knew I had cancer the second the tumor appeared on that second ultrasound. I didn't let on to anyone because I hate waiting for test results and I like knowing them immediately and I didn't want them to change their protocol and make it impossible for patients to see the monitor during the scans. I could not see the monitor for part of the first scan and though I had no idea how to read an ultrasound at all at the time, maybe I would have seen something to ask about that would have prevented them from misdiagnosing it or missing it all together the first time. It was 0.4cm on the mammogram at the time.

The second time it was measured at 2.5cm or 3.5cm on the ultradound and by then was was such a perfect cross section of a malignancy that it will probably end up in a power point presentation somewhere.

I'm usually a big fan of not calling something cancer until the biopsy says it is but this was really as cancer looking as cancer gets.

My doctor called me the next day, making a point to tell me he was calling me on his day off, and told me he would recommend going straight to a breast surgeon. I think by my reaction he thought I didn't understand what he was getting at so he repeated himself.

I mainly just spent the extra time being mad at being misdiagnosed the first time and thinking about how to tell my family but I'm glad that I walked out of the imaging facility with a good idea of what I had. What I don't understand is, when it's pretty apparent it's malignant, why not just do the biopsy then instead of having the patient wait a week or two? They literally do them in the same room.

Cjzach10:

Both were diagnostic mammograms and ultrasounds because the lump was palpable so they do the mammogram, then send you in to the next room for the ultrasound, which is initially done by a technician, and then the radiologist comes in and goes back over the area in question. I think the first mammogram was just digital. I was 36 and at the first facility I tried to get an appointment with they said my insurance wouldn't cover a 3D mammogram. The second time I'm not sure if it was digital or 3D. They did some extra modes but maybe just because they knew they were looking at something very likely to be malignant.

It was at a breast imaging center at a major hospital but they have an interventional radiologist do the biopsies.

I went to this place the second time just because they had the images from when I went the first time but I went to this place the first time because my usual health care center couldn't get me in for three weeks and I thought it would be a bad idea to wait so long with a new lump given my family history but ironically maybe I wouldn't have gone misdiagnosed for 2 years if I just waited the three weeks. I was supposed to be told my breasts are too dense and I needed an MRI and I was not. I was just told it was normal.