Getting a phone call from a doctor that just poked a 12″ needle in your breast isn’t a call you look forward to. And when you do get that call, you want the doctor to have a good bed-side manner – you know, not be stiff and calculated. Here is the story of the phone call I received and the events that followed.
Monday April 7th – 3:15pm I was in the car ready to drive out of the driveway to take the kids to dance when I got a call from a different doctor at Templeton Imaging. He informed me that the pathology results came in and that I do have cancer cells. What the heck does that mean? So I ask if the lump is cancerous. He says yes. How is your breast doing? At this point I’m crying and I have to tell him wait, just give me a minute. In my head I’m thinking you just told me I have cancer and you want to know how my breast is doing. I understand it’s his job to ask about the discomfort after having a biopsy. I just threw out that it was fine, bruised and tender but that was to be expected. He proceeds to tell me to call my primary doctor and get a surgeon. Do you need the number to your doctor? I said no, but thank you I’m going to call my husband now. I felt sorry for the guy. He was so impersonal, I’m not his patient. I just wish the first doctor could have made the call. He was so nice to me. After I hang up with the doctor Micah says are you ok mom. I told them what the doctor said. Mommy has breast cancer but I’m going to be ok and there is no need to worry. I called William and cried again, he had me pick him up so he could drive the kids to class. He embraced me and loved on me. I had pulled myself together and realized that I would be ok. God is in control and there was still peace over me. We dropped the kids off and I called my doctors office…or maybe she called me. We talked a little. The doctor had told her I was a stage 0 and that no chemo was necessary and it would just be surgery. She was still waiting on the pathology reports to be sent to her and she told me that she would have them the next day. She gave me a local surgeons contact info and told me she would call them.
Tuesday April 8th My doctors office still hadn’t received the pathology report so I called pathology and I had asked the lady who answered the phone if there was anything else we could do to hurry the process. She said no, in her nice attitude way. Seriously? I called William and informed him that pathology seemed to be lagging with the reports and relayed the girls reply. William hung up with me and called Pathology. The report was sitting right there and the person he talked to sent it right over to my doctors office. I received a call from the doctor a while later and was told that the report confirmed I did have breast cancer and that it looked like surgery was the only thing needed, talking to the surgeon was the next step.
ok, have to take a break now…i’ll add more soon.
-Tamika
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