What was the point of the MRI?!

March 2, 2010
There was a point early on that I starting feeling like a piece of luggage in transit at at JFK. I'd been checked in, weighed, measured, had a label slapped onto me and thrown on the belt. A relentless one-way conveyor that took me hither and thither without ever getting to a destination. Poked here, prodded there, stuck with needles, deafened by the MRI..... what next? And what the heck was the point of the MRI?

I learned something quite startling as I went through this ordeal. My particular cancer, the lobular, not an uncommon type, isn't a lump, it's just there. AND YOU CAN'T FEEL IT!! So much for breast self-exams! I'd just had my annual GYN exam and the doctor didn't feel it either. AND it doesn't show on a mammogram!! EEK!

Luckily I'd an annual ultrasound which showed this mass, which is what was biopsied, but if I hadn't been on an ultrasound routine, would it just have kept growing? Maybe eventually it would show up on a mammo. So that was the reason for the MRI..... that's the best way to see what's going on inside our bodies, and they were checking for cancer patrols.

Next transit point for this old bag -- surgery!