The Princess and The Pea-sized lump in her breast...

It was December 2012.  Just before Christmas.  While in the shower I discovered a little, hard lump, the size of a pea in my right breast.  I asked my husband Dale to feel it.  To tell me it was nothing, that I was being overly worried.  He could feel it too and thought it was worth having the doctor take a look at it to make sure it was nothing to worry about.  He encouraged me to make an appointment.  And that I did...but it was the holidays and life was busy and hectic and I only had certain days where I could even make it to the doctor office and then I would cancel and reschedule.  In hindsight I might of been avoiding the answer I might get.  I let three months go by before finally keeping an appointment.

Hiding behind this smile is fear.

On March 27, 2013 Dr. Chen examined my breast, felt the same lump and wrote orders for a mammogram.  At age 37 it was to be my first mammogram ever.  I was to complete this in the next two weeks.  I immediately called to schedule the appointment, which was easy enough.  

I had a week to wait until my appointment.  I didn't want to make a big deal about it or worry a whole lot.  But I couldn't help but wonder what this little hard knot in my breast was doing there.  By now it was the size of a jelly-bean.  This was how it would continue to be described at all my visits.  The jelly-bean.

I kept reminding myself, no one in my family ever had breast cancer at an early age and the only one who I knew to even have breast cancer at all was my dad's mom but she was in her 80's when she was diagnosed and treated.  

It surely seemed that I would get the mammogram and they would tell me all was well, that my boobies were simply fibrous and I had a cyst or something benign.  But that was not to be the case....