If you’re just joining the story, I’ve started adding chapters to help keep up since this is all online. I’m hurrying to try to get the preface out there so we can get to the present moment and give accurate updates. You’re welcome to start here but if you’d like some background please read the previous 3 chapters.
My appointment was scheduled for Feb 10th and I was so anxious, my husband was with me, he lost both his parents to cancer and this is the last thing I want to subject him to especially when the loss of his mom was not that long ago in 2019. This cannot be happening to us, it really cannot. I have so many plans with our life, our grandchildren, it’s just not possible this is possibly happening.
I explain to the doctor my symptoms and inform her about the lumps, one of which my husband had no idea of, she feels me up and shit got real. She sat down and explained she believes this is cancer and we need to move quickly due to my physical symptoms and the size of the lumps and is hoping to get me scheduled for a mammogram/ultrasound/biopsy tomorrow or at least within 48 hours.
I’m now in shock and pretty convinced all this is due to a broken tooth that I didn’t take care of. I share a story about being hospitalized in 1994 due to Toxic Shock Syndrome from breastfeeding and how I carried my 4 month old baby into the emergency room with a 105.9 temperature and a blood pressure of 60/20. My sickness tolerance is really really high along with my pain tolerance so this has to be from 6 months of a broken tooth, it just has to be. She is not convinced at all and advises me to start on some ivermectin and the radiology place will be calling me the next day and we went home and I cried. I cried the entire night, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t want traditional cancer treatments, I knew I’d die if I did them. No one survives cancer treatments with chemo, everyone knows that. I didn’t and don’t want to go out like that. Today is March 2, 2026 and I still feel that way. I don’t want to have traditional treatment and I had to figure out how to have that conversation with my husband who is now having flashbacks of watching his mom die after having traditional treatment.
The doctor called the next day to check on me and see if they’d called to schedule the mammogram which they hadn’t and we chatted about how I was feeling. She let me know there was a slight chance this could be an abscess from my tooth but her gut is telling her it isn’t. We started on some 500mg Augmentin that same day and by the time I’d taken the second dose the burning in my chest was moderately better. I have confidence this is tooth related and have convinced myself this is just an abscess and I had a bad cold or something and the Augmentin is going to fix me right up! The things I tell myself when I’m in denial are hilarious or this is my unconscious mind keeping me positive and hopeful.
The clinic doing the mammogram and ultrasound called me on Thursday and they want to schedule it the next day and I panic at the thought. I just started my business it was doing good and now I’ve already had to cut back, I just found out my dad died and my head was whirling so the latest they would schedule was Wednesday February 18, 2026, they would be able to tell me if it’s only an abscess or not.
I didn’t want to do a mammogram at all, I was open to an ultrasound but would prefer not to have either. I can’t even describe the anxiety I had it was incredibly intense. I went from laughing to crying to making jokes back to crying, we also quickly looked at some benefits packages, kind of planning end of life and not doing anything as we’re jumping to conclusions.
The night before the mammogram we talked about whether we both needed to go because the antibiotics were doing something to me as I was feeling better and ultimately decided I could go alone so I could go back to work afterwards.
The morning of the procedure I was solemn and quiet and holding in every emotion I had, no one was going to be able to tell how scared I was that day. I checked in and was greeted by a very pleasant nurse/technician who showed me to the changing room where I could put on a robe and wait in the spa like waiting room that was playing soft meditation type spa music. I was not comfortable being there, my intuition told me to leave, this was not the correct path, but I stayed. I pushed down the voice telling me to leave and stayed until my name was called and I was taken to a room with a weird machine and my itty bitties were smashed in every direction possible and I went back to the waiting room to await the ultrasound. The nurse technician came back and we had to take more mammogram photos which was another indication that I already knew what I had and I needed to go before they popped open the mass inside my breast and I went back to the waiting room. A different technician came and called me in for my ultrasound and I went to a different room where she lubed my boobs up and started moving the ultrasound machine over them. I remember her spending an immense amount of time on the lump and it seemed like she kept going over the same areas repeatedly. It seemed to take forever for the ultrasound to be completed but it finally was and I went and got dressed and waited back in the fancy spa room for the radiologist to read the reports.
It’s so uncomfortable waiting for them to call me back there and by the time they did I’m trying to plan an escape route. I shouldn’t have gone there, I knew I’d die if I stayed but I did and when they called me back it was the moment of truth, as much truth as I was going to allow.
Whew this was a long one and I’m exhausted. Let’s end the chapter here.
My goal is to one day clean these up and add the fancy wordsbut for now I just wanted them to get written down.
My Life, My Story 
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