I decided to write a post today on behalf of EdenFantasys in honor of their EdenFantasys supports Breast Cancer Awareness campaign. I decided to write about something that I have never wrote about, and that is, that I had someone very dear to me, who found a lump in her breast when she was pregnant. Who was this person? It was my mom, when she was pregnant with me!
In all honesty this story chills me to my very core because of the way that it was approached back then, It was in the early 80’s and apparently.. they weren’t very medically advanced back then when it came to breast cancer!
My mom had told me this story before, mostly that she had a lump when she was pregnant with me, and that’s about all I knew. I got her to tell me the story in full today, and this is what she wrote, in her own words.
When I was 22 years old and about 12 weeks pregnant with my first and only baby my ob/gyn found a large lump in my right breast.
Due to being pregnant they decided not to do a biopsy and this was in the fall of 1983.
Then they did not do scans, everything was done by “feel” on me. They gave me a “model” of a breast and I was to feel til I could tell them what i felt in it. It took me several attempts to find the lump.
After that I found the one in my own breast. It was at the 5 o clock position. I was scheduled for immediate surgery, due to being pregnant, they were afraid that if it was cancerous that it would spread. And that it could endanger or affect the baby.
The morning of the surgery, they gave me a pill that first let the baby go to sleep, then they put me under. The lump lay inward and was removed successfully.
They sent the lump{tissue} off be to be tested. They showed my husband the size of it. It was as big as his thumb! we were on pins and needles til the results came back! it was not cancerous!
After that, I started having to have a mammogram every 2 years, and I do them yearly.
I am so glad things have advanced and people have learned more about breast cancer. I am also glad that they didn’t find anything cancerous and that my mom and ME were and are ok. I don’t have to imagine being 22 and going through a battle with cancer, but mine was cervical, but that’s another story for another day!
I was provided a giftcard in exchange for this post by edenfantasys for this post.