Battleship on my Boob

Today I had what I really really really hope is my last biopsy this month. Biopsies aren’t terribly painful, there’s a whole lot of lidocaine to take care of that, but they’re really uncomfortable during and after the procedure. WARNING: this is about to get graphic. In a basic biopsy, after shooting you up with a local anesthetic, the radiologist cuts a hole in your skin, inserts a super skinny straw into the hole until it hits the part they want to biopsy, and then uses an extraction device (like a super skinny tweezer, but way more high tech) to take a sample of the cells. The radiologist takes 5-10 samples, and then leaves behind an itty bitty metal marker so that they can find the site later on if needed. Normally, the radiologist uses an ultrasound to find the biopsy location and to guide the needle-straw. The first 3 biopsies I had were ultrasound guided.

Today was a different story. When I had my MRI 10 days ago, they found an additional small mass that looked potentially cancerous in my right breast that the mammogram didn’t detect (my giant fucking tumor was probably getting in the way). To be on the safe side, we decided to biopsy this mass. While chemo, radiation and a mastectomy will all attack this little mass at the same time the big mass gets DESTROYED, there is an off-chance that this mass is a different cancer than the big mass, in which case it might require different treatment (particularly if the mass isn’t triple negative – see prior post for explanation). Last week, Dr Shearer tried to biopsy this itty-bitty titty mass when he was doing the lymph node biopsy, but under ultra sound he couldn’t verify that what he was seeing was the same as what was on the MRI … so he wanted a stronger imaging technology to find the mass again and help guide the biopsy.

So, today I got my first MR-biopsy. The setup is just like the original MRI (laying on my tummy, superman style, while my boobs dangled down for the MRI to scan) only this time they used a plastic panel with a grid on it to compress my breast and use as a “locater’ to help connect the biopsy with the MR image. Basically, its like Boobs Battleship, where you use an MRI to tell you where on the grid the battleship is located, and then use a biopsy to “sink” the ship. One problem – it was like playing battleship with a 9-year old cheater, because the mass wouldn’t stay still. MRI says “B3” – Radiologist inserts needle in B3, Ari goes back for another scan, MRI says. “just kidding, the mass is now in A2, sucker!” and a new needle goes in to A2. It was super frustrating, boring (you have to lie still the entire time this is happening), and I had to pee about 10 minutes in to the procedure. I was forgiving of Dr Boroumand because she was doing her residency at Yale while I was there for business school, and we bonded over a shared love of Caseus grilled cheese and studying at Sterling. Even still, I’d be quite happy to never get an MR biopsy again. All in, Dr B got 10 samples and sent them off to the pathology lab – results will be back tomorrow. Oh yeah, I got to end this lovely MR biopsy adventure with another mammogram to confirm the metal bit was properly located. Poor Ralph is now thoroughly black and blue, and quite the site to look at (I wouldn’t recommend it).

In bright news, today my Nurse Navigator, Megan, was able to get me in to see my Medical Oncologist earlier than planned. So now I get to meet with Dr Tsai this Wednesday (5 days earlier than originally planned) to start hashing out the plan for chemo. I’m ready to get the plan locked down and start getting shit done!

Unfortunately, I’m now covered in bruises from all the biopsies, blood draws and IVs …

Fortunately, I arrived home today to find a package from my favorite Portland-based identical twins (and their parents) containing the most incredible pair of neon-orange high-top air force ones – which are certain to distract everyone from all the bruises!