Pre Ultrasound

August 4, 2009. I had been suffering from what my doctor thought was mastitis for awhile. I had been on antibiotics for three weeks to clear it up. The antibiotics did shrink the "infection" from an orange-sized growth to about the size of a golf ball. There was no reason to think it was anything else. I am diabetic, and I did my research, diabetics can get these kinds of infections. The way the growth reacted to the medications I assumed it was an infection. But it only got so much better, and then the redness and heat began. I knew I was going to have to have more testing to rule out anything else. So being a midwife and not particularly wanting to go to the hospital for a mammogram, I asked a business aquaintance if he would mind doing a preliminary ultrasound to give me an idea of what it was. My husband was there with me. From the start I knew it was bad. I could not see the ultrasound screen but I didn't need to. I saw the realization dawning on my husband's face that this was not just an infection. Something serious was wrong. My friend broke the news we already knew. "This isn't a diagnosis, but you need to get in right now. You have four growths, two with "flow". One of those is in your lymph nodes."
I called my doctor. She knew my ultrasound guy and knew he was good at what he did. She asked me what oncologist I preferred. I assumed that was the appointment she was making for me. It was not. She was making an appointment for a mammogram/ultrasound for the next day.