Scared of the biopsy in the morning.

[knitter4democracy]

I thought maybe ya'll here could understand.

Last year, they found a huge tumor in my right kidney. I had surgery, and they took everything out--kidney, adrenal gland, all surrounding tissue, slice of my liver, and three inches of rib to get it out intact. Ever since, I've had a hard recovery from that and then full-blown asthma, weight gain no one can explain, odd other symptoms and test results that don't make sense. It's been hard.

So, a couple of weeks ago at my yearly checkup, I tell my internist about my left breast hurting a bit. Because of my history (seven months before the kidney surgery, I had exploratory surgery to figure out why I'd had severe chronic abdominal pain for a year that ended up being appendicitis), my doctor decided to play it safe and have me get an ultrasound (I'm 33, and ultrasounds are more accurate, apparently, at my age).

They found several cysts, including a decent-sized one where the pain is. Those look benign. Then they found one I didn't know about and can't feel that doesn't hurt that I'm getting biopsied in the morning.

Scared. out. of. my. gourd.

The kidney tumor, after waiting for a month on pathology and four pathologists arguing back and forth about it, was decided not to be cancer. It just looked and acted like cancer, but they're mostly sure that it won't come back (another reason why my doctor keeps close tabs on me--what if they were wrong?). What if this cyst is cancer--it wasn't last time, so it might be this time.

I felt especially anxious when the nurse told me yesterday that 80% of all breast lumps are benign. Yeah, and the odds said I wouldn't have a huge kidney tumor that no one had ever seen the like of before, either. The odds of my appendicitis being misdiagnosed for ten years wasn't exactly high in the odds, either.

I just need hugs.