I Like Your Breasts

I'm back home and feeling much, much better. The most likely option at this point is still breast cancer with lymph node involvement (as opposed to reactive lymph nodes, which is why they were going to MRI my breasts regardless of how the biopsy came out). That's not ideal, but it's not the end of the world, either. Certainly lower on the list of options, but not at the very bottom. I've no reason to go borrowing trouble against something worse until the testing is done, and there are no other obvious lymph nodes than the left armpit ones that they've seen so far. Until proven otherwise, we are staying in the category of 'treatable, curable'.

Many of you have asked if there's anything you can do for me right now. There is. You can feel yourself up, and you can do it right now. If you're not sure how here is a handy link (with pictures) to guide you through it. If your significant other has breasts, please ask her to do the same (or have some fun and do it for her). If you are of an age where you should be getting regular mammograms, but haven't, you can make an appointment to get one. Most communities have a free or low cost option for women. For my local people, here is a program for people living in Illinois. Dudes on my f'list, it may not be as common, but why don't you go ahead and feel up at least your chest and armpits right now for giggles (also, Hodgkin's is more common for dudes than women, so digging around in your armpits isn't a half bad idea just for that). See also, above, about if your partner has the boobage.

Then ask others to do the same. You've got f'lists that are different than mine, so spread the word far and wide. Call it International Fannish Feel Yourself Up day, or something. Make it a general PSA post, or feel free to use me as a scare story (I'm unlocking the posts I've made just in case it freaks someone out enough to have a moment alone with their boobs). This, this is what you can do for me. You can make sure that as many people as possible either avoid, or catch this shit early.

And because we should never be without fun, if you do want to comment to this post? Please include a picture of your favorite boobs to look at. I watch a lot of the same shows you guys do, I know damn well there are some fine racks out there. Share 'em.

Love you all.

(no subject)

I am googling again. The intertubes are being both helpful and not. Helpful in that everything I can find says it would be extremely unusual for this to be ovarian cancer, one of the things they will be looking for next week, and the worst possible finding since if it was that and it's all the way up in my axillary nodes, I should start planning my memorial vid show now. I know why they want to test for it anyway, but it's not weighing quite so heavily, since all the lymph nodes it woulda got to first seem to be peachy.

Not helpful in that it's giving me very little denial wiggle room that this is happening in some form, and yes, almost certainly breast cancer since that's the thing that went ping on further examination of the samples. The false positive rate is nearly nonexistent in detecting malignancy from an axillary lymph node needle biopsy. I was sort of hoping since they misread the initial findings, that meant I had a chance of them taking it all back. The Hodgkin's thing makes sense since I presented a lot like Hodgkin's, and I had a negative mammogram, so it was the most likely source for any cancer cells they saw before they started doing staining and more indepth examinatinon and stuff. Unless the lab is utterly incompetent (and I am not above hoping for shoddy workmanship here, if my pathologist got like..mostly D's in medical school that would be AWESOME), yeah.

Mostly just babbling here.