23 June 2025
Okay friends, it’s a fork in the stream path day for me and things could be getting turbulent. Heading into Princess Margaret Hospital for biopsy to find out if my pal ‘leftie’ is sprouting another round of breast cancer.
3 years ago they caught it super early thanks to a screening mammogram and this new bit of sketchy business was spotted the same way. Wish me luck!
TLDR: don’t put off your cancer screenings!!! Cancer fucking sucks, and I’m not keen to get back on this horrible roller coaster, but catching it early is the next best option.
6 June 2025
Waiting for the biopsy results to come in I’m learning more about how to read my hospital reports. BIRADS is like the DEFCON levels of breast cancer diagnostics.
- BIRADS 0: incomplete imaging. Please try again
- BIRADS 1: nothing of concern. Return to your normally scheduled life.
- BIRADS 2: benign. Whatever you’ve got, it’s not cancer.
- BIRADS 3: probably benign. See 2, but with less certainty so let’s keep an eye on it.
- BIRADS 4: sketchy. Gonna take a biopsy sample and see what’s up.
- BIRADS 5: totally suss. Not looking good, but can’t know for sure without a biopsy.
- BIRADS 6: it’s cancer.
I’m still holding at BIRADS 4 Healing well and waiting for lab results.
27 June 2025
Still no biopsy results yet. Looks like I’m in for a weekend of trying not to go too squirrelly waiting.
In the meantime I’ve learned that I now carrying a butterfly over my heart. More specifically, a butterfly HydroMark biopsy clip left behind to help identify the area of concern in future imaging tests. The clip itself is actually 2 pieces – a shaped metal coil (mine’s the ‘butterfly’ shape) to show up on xrays like mammogram. The coil is embedded in hydrogel that starts out small during installation and then slowly absorbed my internal boob water just like those weird expanding toys we put in jars in the 1990s. The hydrogel part is so it shows up on ultrasound where the metal butterfly wouldn’t.
5 July 2025
Biopsy results are in and the news isn’t good. Pathology report has words like carcinoma, comedo necrosis, nuclear grade 2-3, and recurrence.
Good news is that it also says ‘no evidence of intrusion’ which means it looks like they are catching it early (again). Not my first ride on the breast cancer coaster.
Got the news Thursday night and have had time to tell my family and stop feeling quite so numb. Can’t know what comes next until the doctors have time to run more tests and make a treatment plan. Early stage means there isn’t as much of a rush which is overall a good thing, but hard on the anxiety levels as I wait for the medical machine to fit me into the production schedule.
Feels like I’m in that moment on the rollercoaster when after standing in the endless line up have finally sat down in a car and the security bar just clicked into place. Nothing moving yet, but the ride is definitely going to happen.
