Chin Chin

I've been busy celebrating my mammogram - thank you for all your kind messages! The day (and lead-up) was fraught with scanxiety. Scanxiety is a Real Thing and is generally agreed to be a Bad Thing. As I wrote Day +62 #100DaysDIEP this Really Bad Thing is often a contentious and contradictory issue: you want scans to (hopefully) get the all clear, but the limbo when prepping and waiting for results can be debilitating. I was fortunate that I had my scans done in the morning, left with my images in my mitts and had the report emailed to my breast surgeon in time for our lunch-time appointment. All done and dusted in 4 hours from “put your breast on here” to “see you next year”. But scanxiety is about more than time-scales. For early breast cancer, and specifically Invasive Lobular Cancer (ILC) which I had, the current standard scanning protocol is an annual mammo and u/sound. ILC is often called the ‘sneaky’ cancer and it may not be picked up in these scans. . At a recent webcast by the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance (LBCA) it was suggested that if the extent of ILC becomes more apparent through successive diagnostic scans then the patient’s scanning protocol should involve an annual mammogram and u/sound with an MRI 6 months later. When I was diagnosed my ILC seemed to spread as I progressed through more detailed images: more disease was seen on the u/sound than the initial mammogram, and even more was seen with MRI. So I spoke to my breast surgeon about the LBCA’s recommendations. After highlighting that there’s no evidence to suggest that additional scanning of the breast/s improves patient outcome (survival), they agreed to refer me for an MRI. This will be self-funded but I’m made up to have this additional cushion of scanning. I just need to deal with the additional scanxiety spin-out and I’m all set. As I said, a contradictory state of affairs. But who said the Shitshow was gonna be easy? Cheers! . #AdvocateForYourself