I have been experiencing an increasing amount of breast pain recently which came to a head on Sunday. The natural thing to do when something hurts is to touch it an feel where the pain is, unfortunately when i did this i could feel a definite lump which set alarm bells ringing. It was extremely sore and the more i touched it the more pronounced it seemed to be. Mindful of the fact that I’ve been told on a number of occasions that sinister lumps in breasts are very rarely painful i thought about it for a while then decided it was better to be safe than sorry and made an online booking to see one of my wonderful GPs first thing Monday morning.
I haven’t seen this one for sometime and she seemed very surprised to see me but she was lovely as usual. We talked for a while about my other ongoing issues which she was very happy to hear that i seem to have them under control at the moment at least. She then moved on to the breast pain and performed a very thorough examination. She got to the area where the pain was the most intense and proceeded to give it a good old press, I yelped with pain and she apologised. After giving it some thought she decided i should have an ultrasound and printed a referral for me, she then wrote on it +/- FNA. I’ve seen this before and there was immediate horror running through me, the mere thought of someone sticking a needle, however fine, into my very painful breast made me feel almost sick! She explained why she thought it necessary, gave me a hug and i left.
Now here’s the thing, I’ve spent forty plus years hiding my breasts and staying covered up at all times but now that i can be proud of them the thought of having to have surgery on them brought real fear. Accordingly, i went straight to West Coast Radiology and made an appointment with the lady i have seen numerous times for one thing or another. I didn’t have long to wait as they could fit me in today. When I arrived the receptionist did all the usual checks of name, address and date of birth and asked me to take a seat. I had only just sat down when the sonographer called me in. She asked how I’d been and we talked about the issue with the breast while i took off my top and laid on the bed. She was extremely thorough and explained the visuals on the screen. She asked me about my HRT program and my diet and lifestyle then announced that the lump was almost certainly asymmetrical gynecomastia and while it was painful it wasn’t sinister. She also went to great lengths to tell me I’d done the correct thing in getting it checked out but no FNA was needed. Talk about a sigh of relief, i thanked her very much, gave her a hug and left.
I had work organised for this afternoon so went home, changed my clothes, had some lunch and headed to the job. The work was for a lovely lady whom I’d been recommended to by one of my longest standing customers which is always appreciated. I had done some of the jobs last week but the weather had prevented me from doing a couple of outdoor jobs. One of them was to re-affix an outdoor light to a tree. The brackets had rusted away and it had fallen off, it shouldn’t have been a difficult job but i needed to remove the remains of the old bracket. As the screws were well and truely rusted I decided to cut it off with the angle grinder. Sadly this was where it all went wrong! With the bracket in one hand and the grinder in the other, somehow my right hand came into contact with the wheel. At first it didn’t look more than a scratch but on closer examination i could see the bone of my index finger and the blood was now flowing! I got down off the ladder and went into the house, explained what had happened and was immediately taken to the garage where she produced a first aid kit from her car. She took one look at the wound and announced i would need to go to hospital. She put me in her car after wrapping some sort of dressing around it and we were off.
The triage nurse was lovely, took my details and sent me to the next stage. They went through the details again and sent us back to the waiting area. By this time Denise had arrived after a call by the house owner and we were soon taken through into the treatment area. The doctor examined it and announced that he would need to give me a nerve blocker in order to clean up the wound. I thought it sounded bad news but by this stage i was in considerable pain so didn’t argue. There followed 4 injections in the finger followed by a tetanus in my arm for good measure!
So sadly, instead of one needle in my breast i ended up with 5 in various places and 4 stitches but it could have been much worse. It could easily have cost me a finger so i am at least thankful for that and also that I wasn’t working on my own as it could have been a serious problem! My finger will heal although it could take a while so it will mean taking things easy for some time but at lease i still have all my digits.