My Perspective Along This Journey
In May 1998, I was breezing along as many women are, working hard, trying to save for retirement after raising five children as a solo parent since 1980. I'd had my mammogram, it was in my quarterly goals! It was negative! I was thinking about my vacation in July when I'd get away from long weeks, nonproductive meetings, and trying to herd others follow through like working longhorn at night, just to swim, snorkel, and rest...in the Caribbean with a colleague who is a coral reef expert!
This is my journey. The biopsy in May revealed 2 large sites of askew calcifications ("perhaps 3 sites"), which were a rapidly growing type of malignant cells. I was assured that these were not invasive carcinoma, over and over, again.
Two months later I found out that my past three annual mammograms in a row were misread (one radiologist was not a certified breast radiologist but a neuro-radiologist (brain, etc) and the first one—who knows, she wasn't licensed in my State but enscounced in the infamous medical school where she read my mammograms, and twice refused to let me have a "second opinion" because I "knew too much" and because my two younger siblings had died of cancer (at 19 and 26), I was sure that I would have cancer, too. Right on both counts! Any woman who has breastfed five infants (most for two years) knows when her breast feeling distended twenty years later.
The previous year's mammogram did evidence calcifications, but the following year's radiologist did not call for past films to be reviewed, and in fact, indicated they were not available for review, but I had them with me when I was requesting a meeting and a second objective reading. Actually, the three prior radiologists had all written that on my mammography reports, lies, absolute lies.
Only a breast radiologist in 1995 at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit (where I was consulting) called for all my past mammograms and would not release a report for weeks, and then told me to be certain to have double readings on all my future mammograms. He was "not comfortable" with what he saw but there had been no changes. Bless that man. I never did achieve two readings until the last fateful ones, and it was only because I insisted, threw a fit, and contacted a breast radiologist friend in a different city for a name of someone to perform the second opinion.
I'll never, ever again be so complacent. Now, I understand why I was always trying to be "a good girl," but until chemo surfaced repressed memories of child abuse, I did my best to be use my brain to achieve activism, not my temper. Now, I use whatever it takes.
reviewed: Saturday, October 21, 2006