Soooooo you never know what your path in life is going to look like. You have a plan, an idea, a dream and then it doesn’t quite go the way you were thinking. A bit of a detour, a bend in the road . . . just take a breath and move forward, one day at a time. Here we go . . . . . this is the beginning of my “It’s a Dot” journey.

I finally made that “yearly” check up appointment with the doctor the first part of June. Did the whole physical thing – blood test thing, mammogram thing . . . all of it. My blood test results came back great . . . cholesterol good, even my vitamin D was good . . . women make sure you have your vitamin D levels checked, especially as we get older. I received a phone call regarding my mammogram. They wanted me to come back in for a 2nd one. When I went in and asked “why” the second one, they showed me a very small area on the Xray (magnified a ton) and told me it was calcium deposits “huuuhhhh” . . . evidently calcium deposits from our milk ducts are quite normal in women “my age” . . . seriously my age . . ok, so anywho they took more pictures and told me I needed a biopsy. I just started crying. OMG . . . what????

One week later I was having a biopsy. The doctor had told me that sometimes the mammograms can’t see through the calcium deposits so they request a biopsy to make sure there is nothing else there. OK, well that made me feel a little better. Let me just say that I am a total woos. One of my dear friends took me to the biopsy appointment and waited for me while the procedure was going on – the actual procedure only took about 5 min. but the whole appointment  took an hour and 1/2. (Thanks Pat!)

Five days later I got the call, “I’m sorry to tell you this but we found cancer cells”. Wow, I was just shocked. I was driving back to work from lunch and I just didn’t “get it”. How is this even possible? What did she just say? Oh my word, this just can’t be real! It felt very surreal . . . I could hear the words coming through the phone but it was not making sense. I am a pretty healthy person and haven’t had any health problems, no breast cancer in my family. I just sat in the parking lot at work and cried. It was sooo overwhelming.

I went home and about an hour later Jane, a nurse called me from the surgeon’s office to set up an appointment. She told me the biopsy had removed a 1.5mm cell (hence the dot) of invasive carcinoma grade 1 (well defined cancer cell) and  high grade ductal carcinoma in situ (pre-cancer cells). Biopsies are graded from 1-3 depending on the findings from the pathology report (3=angry). The cancer  “stage” is determined after the pathology report from the surgery. I actually felt a little relieved. The cancer cell was just a grade 1 & contained – not bad – that was the lowest grade.  A dot – seriously . . . it’s a dot, no biggey, right?!. . . well then she set up the appointment for a consultation with one of the  surgeons to discuss lumpectomy or mastectomy. Woooooough! Uhhhhhh . . . it’s a dot! My surgeon would be Dr. G (that’s what I’m calling him) and my consultation was set up for June 28th . . . . to be continued.