Scared to death, need breast MRI, please help

[tortoise221]

Hello. I am 30 years old and I recently posted this in the expert forum but I need more advice and encouragement.  I have been very sick over this for about 10 days and I have over a week until my MRI and over two weeks until I see my surgeon.

I recently had an ultrasound for a small palpable squishy nodule in the 6 O'clock region of my left breast.  I had a normal mammogram about 2 1/2 monts ago.  At the ultrasound, the tech brought in the doc who said it was superficial and is not a simple cyst.  He said I need an MRI.  The final report said I have a 4 x 2 mm hypoechoic nodule with a suggestion of a focal area of increased echogenicity that may represent hilum.  However, the echogenic center is not a constant finding and the nodule does not have good through transmission. It is wider than tall. MR is recommended.  The doctor brought in during the ultrasound said that he thinks it is probably nothing but he is not gambling with my breasts.  

I have been extremely sick over this, crying often and even throwing up.  I can barely do my job at work.  I can't help but panic. Did anyone out there ever go through anything like this?  I know you are not docs, but how serious does this sound?  MRI is in two weeks and I am on Birth Control pills.  Should I quit them because if it is cancer it could help it grow?  Please help.

Thanks.

[tortoise221]

I am glad you are doing good now.  I know what you mean about all you know about cancer is dying.  That is why I panic so much.  I watched my dad die of kidney cancer and I have never been the same since.  You, along with everyone who posted, are very inspiratonal to me.  Realizing that many people survive cancer and that I also will survive cancer (if I have it) is something that I really need to do.  I am trying to cope with this and corresponding with you and everyone here is helping.

Thanks again.

[tortoise221]

Thanks for replying to me.  All of this support means alot.  I am not so afraid of the actual MRI as am I of what it will find.  I think I will probably start taking xanax soon as this is alot for me to handle.  

Thanks again.

[jaimelagym]

Hi, I was diagnosed with stage 1 hormone + her2- . Mine showed up on the mammogram and on the ultrasound, so I had to do a biopsy. I wasn't worried because all the doctors kept telling me that it is probably nothing, that many women my age have noncancerous cysts, etc.. So the day they called me on the phone to tell I had cancer, I was shocked and scared to death, all I knew about this disease was dying. That night I couldn't eat sleep I really felt sick. That is when I realized how my mind could make me sick, and I decided that I will use my mind to make me better and not sicker. I am felling well now, and I have realized that many people survive cancer at all ages and that so will I.  You will have to do a biopsy at the end but the MRI is very sensitive, that is it is unlikely to miss a tumor. Especially for young women who have dense breast tissue, mammograms are more likely to give a false negative. Your doctor is being very thorough, which is great. The reason the MRI needs to be at a certain time of the cycle is to give less false positives. For that reason I had the surgery before the MRI since I didn't want to wait so long before they removed the existing tumor. Again the hardest part is waiting, if I could have had all the information at once it wouldn't have been so bad, the waiting and waiting for more and more test was so hard. Try to find something that relaxes you, for me it was going to nature.
I think it is hard to biopsy something so small, great chance of missing it, while they can biopsy small mass like that better with an MRI.
If you have more question we can talk on the phone.
Good luck!

[SueYoung55]

MRI's are a piece of cake. You lay on a table with the girls laying in cutout holes in the table so the machine can image them successfully. It's not painful, it should not cause fear.

Ask your doctor for a small prescription of valium to help you calm down before you cause yourself to get cancer (those words said very gently from a cancer survivor).

Relax and breathe! Be well.

[tortoise221]

Thanks for responding to me so quickly.  Support in this means so much to me.  

I am so sorry to hear of you diagnosis.  What type of breast cancer do you have and how did you find it?  How are you doing now?  I hope you are well.  Thanks for the quote.  I will be repeating it to myself frequenly over the next few weeks.

I am glad that my doc is taking things seriously and hopefully, if it is cancer, it is caught early.  I am scared of the MRI though.  I don't understant why it is being ordered if I will need a biopsy anyway.  I just wish I could biopsy now.  This has been going on so long because the imaging center said I had to wait until between days seven and ten of my cycle to have a breast MRI.  When all this began, I was on day 12 so I had to wait.

Regarding the pills, I am going to stop for this next cycle.  Obviously because I am scared of the breast issue but also because if the surgeon tells me to stop and I am mid cycle, I am afraid it will really screw me up.  I am only on the pills because I had alot of mid cycle bleeding and they helped control it.  

Thanks again.

[tortoise221]

Thanks for the advice.  I really appriciate the response.  I have a high level of anxiety and relaxing is not something I am good at, but I know I need to try a little more becaue I am making myself very ill.  Thanks again for taking the time to respond and doing so very quickly.  Having support helps.

Thanks again.

[jaimelagym]

I was 30 when I got diagnosed last year, if there is one thing I learned is to try, however hard that is, not to worry about things. There is a nice quote by Mark Twain: " I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.." The hardest part is all the waiting, at first it freaked me out too. But if it is cancer which I hope it isn't, either way they caught it very very early which is so much easier to treat. The other thing to remember is that even thought MRI rarely misses a cancerous lump it often has false positive. So don't worry too much even if they find something, before a biopsy you won't really have an answer. Overall you are really lucky that your doctor is taking it seriously, I was lucky too, but I have some friends whose doctor told them they have nothing to worry about at their age and they only got diagnosed when the lump became huge.
Regarding the birth control pill, I stopped using them because my mum was diagnosed with an estrogen positive breast cancer. I don't think that two weeks or a month will make any real difference in your diagnosis.Good luck!

[japdip]

If this finding is superficial, and I have no doubt that it is, I don't see any reason to be so worried about it. It obviously does not involve the breast tissue and further investigation is the proper way to go to arrive at a definite diagnosis. In any event, stopping your birth control medication would have no effect on the situation. I think you need to relax and wait until you have the MRI and get the report from that before getting so stressed out about this. By the way the lesion is VERY small.     Regards .....