A sunny Sunday lunchtime in early May - someone asked me a question and I leant forward in a way designed to make me appear pensive and knowledgeable... chin cupped in right hand, left hand tucked under the right arm, resting on the right boob... As I leaned I felt... something... something that wasn't there before... Couldn't really mention this at the Sunday dinner table and so kept quiet.
I have a history of cysts in my breasts, so I wasn't too perturbed... left it 24 hours to see if it changed, as it didn't I made an appointment to see the GP. He thought it was probably a cyst (or at least that's what he said at the time...) but referred me to the local breast unit. They called me with an appointment the following Friday.
So I went along, all cool and calm, expecting to be out in 15 minutes. Wrong. The nice doctor driving the ultrasound machine was suddenly replaced by a lady I knew to be a consultant radiologist... "better do a mammogram"... they didn't like what they saw and so asked if they could do a biopsy there and then... So naturally they did. I leaned over to look at the nurse who had arrived to hold my hand and spotted the "Macmillan Nurse" label... this was the point I nearly ran away screaming.
So after the cutting was over and I was sat in one of those nice little rooms they take you to give you really bad news, she told me that there was a possiblitity that it could be a benign tumour, but they were really only usually found in women in their 20s and 30s - not grey old grannies like me. One thing it wasn't was a cyst. So, not many other options available - it's probably something nasty!
An appointment was fixed for two weeks hence when I would be given results and a plan of action if one was required... and then I was sent home to wonder what the hell was happening to me.
