Three days after my initial surgery, was the follow-up consultation with Dr D. We weren’t expecting anything more serious from the pathology, so there was no obvious reason to be dreading what he might say, however my beautiful little dog signalled I needed to be prepared. As I got ready for the appointment she hopped up on my lap and ever so gently rested her head on my right breast. It was barely touching, but I wondered if her uncharacteristically sad and sympathetic eyes were a warning.
There was no “I’m sorry Kate – you’ve got cancer.” It was simply “we’ve picked up some changes.”
Those changes were DCIS, in the margins around the bigger lump in my right breast. As Paul tried desperately to take it all in, I went into ‘work mode’. The poor specialist was hit with a barrage of questions – “What do I need to know, what has to happen, who do I need to talk to, where do I need to go?”
Dr D asked repeatedly if I was okay, and commented that I was “very calm, and handling it very well considering.” He also asked how I felt. “Lucky” was the over-riding emotion and my immediate response. How incredibly lucky was I that he saw fit to remove the lumps in the first place. Had he not, those cells would not have been picked up at this early stage, but instead left to fester.
Operation #2 was booked for around a week later.
Encore Performances 
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