As you are probably aware, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It’s arguably the public health campaign that’s hardest to miss. At least one of your favourite products has probably “gone pink” and is donating a portion of its RRP to a breast cancer charity and if you’ve been in an actual shop you might have seen ribbons, pin badges, silicone wristbands and more on sale at the till.
This particular October, however, has seen an increase in my own breast cancer awareness as I’ve had to take a visit to the symptomatic breast screening clinic. I’m nearly 50 – in body if not in mind – so I was expecting to be called for a mammogram soon anyway, but my left boob decided to be dramatic so I ended up getting one a little bit early.
I am not the most conscientious when it comes to checking my breasts. I do it, but it’s not routine and I haven’t really followed the guidelines on how to check them properly. However, despite my slackness in this area, I felt a lump a few weeks ago. I’d actually thought I felt something a few weeks earlier but then I couldn’t find it again so I left it at the time but made sure to check more consistently from now on. And, sure enough, on the evening of the 15th of September, I felt it again. It was too late to contact my GP surgery so the next day I completed an e-consult as soon as the app became available at 8am, then dropped my daughter at school and went to meet my friend for coffee and hoped I wouldn’t have to wait too long for an appointment. As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait very long at all. The surgery called at 10:30 and asked me to come in at 11:45!
The GP I saw was lovely. She gave me a breast exam and found the lump in question. She reassured me that she didn’t think it was anything to worry about but I would be receiving a referral to the symptomatic breast clinic, and later that day I got a message through the app saying that I should get an appointment by the 18th and that I should call if I didn’t hear anything.
By the afternoon of the 18th (a Friday) I hadn’t heard anything so I called the clinic. They were quite annoyed that patients were being told to call as they said they were working through the list as fast as possible. They were currently making appointments for people referred on the 15th so they would get to me soon.
The following Monday, the 21st of Sept an appointment came through on the NHS app for 2:50 6th Oct. This is a tricky time as my daughter finishes school at 3 and has an activity at 4:30 so I rang the clinic again to see if it was possible to rearrange. The next available appointment was in a different town about half an hour away, where I know the hospital has terrible parking, and was also on a day that I need to get my daughter to an activity at 4:30. The other option was to move it to the following week so I kept the original appointment. My husband was already planning on taking the afternoon off to come with me so we arranged for him to ferry our daughter around instead and I’d go to the clinic on my own.
On October 6th I arrived at the Diagnosis and Treatment Centre, found the waiting room, and was directed upstairs by the person at reception. I arrived upstairs to a much smaller, crowded waiting room. There was no reception desk in this one so I asked one of the other women waiting if there was somewhere to check in and was told that someone would be out at some point. I feel like a sign might have helped here because a lot of women who arrived after me asked the same question!
Anyway, after a while, a nurse did indeed appear. She ticked me off on her list and handed me a questionnaire to fill in.
After a few little while longer I was called in for my mammogram. I used to work as a radiographer at this hospital so I knew the mammographer and it could have been awkward but, at my previous hospital I had had two transvaginal ultrasounds, a colposcopy, a LLETZ procedure, a laparoscopic hysteroscopy and an episiotomy when I gave birth to my daughter in one of the operating theatres, so I was well past the point of feeling embarrassed by medical procedures! I didn’t have a lot of experience doing mammograms but I was expecting it to be pretty uncomfortable, which it wasn’t at all. During my radiography training I had to spend one week doing mammography and my week was a bit different to most other students as it fell when I was on an exchange trip to Finland. If you think it might be difficult X-raying strangers’ breasts, imagine doing it in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language! I don’t think I would have specialised in mammography anyway, but that week certainly didn’t sell it to me! I did end up working in Nuclear Medicine though, where we provided bone scans and sentinel node injections, so I did help a little bit along the way of lots of women’s breast cancer journeys.
Once the mammo was over I sat back in the waiting room until I was called in to see the doctor, which was basically the same as my initial GP appointment, except she couldn’t find anything so she said to go back to the waiting room until I was called for a scan and that, if it was clear, I could go as everything else looked good.
I didn’t have long to wait until I was called in to the scanning room for my ultrasound. The doctor had warned me that it would likely be another ex-colleague who would be doing it, but it turned out to be a different doctor and an assistant. Despite the cold gel this was probably the easiest part. You just need to lie there while they run the probe over your breast. It also didn’t take very long at all – the doctor didn’t find anything so I was allowed to go home!
All in all, it wasn’t a terrible experience. Every single member of staff was lovely and there’s a waiting room of people in the same boat as you, if you want to chat. Long story short, if you find a lump, don’t put off getting it checked out. As someone with a few health issues, it’s probably the most supportive healthcare environment I’ve ever experienced as a patient. The odds are that it won’t be cancer and, if it is, I can’t imagine a better team of people to put my care in the hands of.
