Whew.

Sooo…been a couple of stressful weeks around here. I didn’t want to post anything publicly about this until we had all the answers, because I honestly couldn’t deal with the extra stress and spoons it would require to try to keep everyone posted. (Plus, I have enough health issues, so I didn’t want to dump incomplete info into the ether.)

I had my mammogram back in early August. Then I got a call the next day to come back for a retake of Lefty. (Like Left Shark in the SuperBowl halftime show that time, it just couldn’t follow the routine.)

Well, the radiologist report for THAT came back the next day, prompting a call from my doctor, giving me a referral to a doctor who specializes in breast diseases (aka cancer). It took a couple of weeks to get in there. I had some microcalcifications that had changed size since my last mammogram last year. She said guess what, I was a lucky contestant chosen to experience the joys of a stereotactic biopsy!

Um, yeah. The thing is, I have a history of cancer in my family, so ignoring this wasn’t an option.

Cue the waiting for that, which was almost as painful as my left boob currently is. (Serves Lefty right.)

Oh, and yeah, I’ve been in a fibro flare on top of this.

AND we had TS Hermine hit this week. Hubby and I had to drive down to the appointment Thursday morning (the actual biopsy) in horrible weather, and then again Friday morning in even nastier weather, to get the results.

Leave it to me to have to deal with this in a tropical storm. *head/desk* When I do shit, I do it RIGHT. *sarcasm*

Fortunately, the pathology report came back as benign. But they left a titanium marker inside Lefty, and I’m getting a new baseline mammogram on it in a couple of weeks so they have something to reference in the future.

Stressful, painful, horrible–exacerbated by a horrible fibro flare on top of that–but the alternatives (of which, being an OCD writer, I can imagine plenty) could have been far worse. I had the best-case scenario, a false alarm.

And a word of advice to the ladies–get ’em squished. As stressful as a false alarm is, I’d rather go through that and have it NOT be cancer, than to NOT get tested and then find out later on I had something that was too far gone to be treated by the time it was discovered.

Not to leave the gents out (who can also get breast cancer) but don’t forget to examine your testicles. Lumps and unusual activity there need to be checked out by your doctor. Early detection is key for some of these varieties.

I’m still in a fibro flare, not helped any by the barometric pressure changes from the storm (no, we had no damage, just rain), but at least it’s “only” a fibro flare. (Never thought I’d think of it in terms of THAT.)

Have you read Beware Falling Ice (Suncoast Society 36) yet? I’ve been getting some great reviews!

http://www.bookstrand.com/tymber-dalton

My next release is Beware Falling Rocks (Suncoast Society 37) on 9/26.