the test results are back. I am now the happy owner of a fibroadenoma, a benign tumor of the breast. I have to decide now if I want to have it removed. Removal means there will be scar tissue there which would interfere with easy reading of mammograms and would cause problems with breastfeeding down the line. leaving it there means there is the chance it would turn malignant or it would hide a truly malignant tumor in the future. Not easy choices. I meet with the surgeon on Wednesday and will be better informed after that visit.

It is a big relief to have a definitive diagnosis. All along people have been saying "I think it's a this or that" but nobody has been able to tell me what it really is and what that really means. Although I know what it really means to have a breast tumor because I talk about them all day long in class and in the oncology clinics I work in. So for the past month i have been looking at the women in for their appointments at various stages of treatment and wondering if that was going to be me. Especially the really young women with their slightly yellow skin and completely hairless bodies. no eyelashes! no eyebrows! it's all gone. I was looking at them and wondering if that was my immediate future.

I was also looking at babies and wondering if that was now out of the question as well. Could it be me, this decision now made for me? I want to have kids and we've been talking about when, but chemotherapy or radiation therapy might just decide all that for us.

What a big relief. This has been a very real experience- no simulation here. Time to put up or shut up, you know? Because until I am actually there, in that chair waiting for that appointment, until then I can't really say I understand what that person is going through.