I received a phone call from this Edinburgh hospital and it was very unexpected
I was all set to go in for my appointment
Earlier this week, I was awaiting news of the ‘blob’.
After a mammogram had been unclear, and a later ultrasound had revealed a peculiar wee lump in my left breast, I’d had a biopsy.
The 13-day wait to get my results had been pretty stressful. I’d kept it together though. I am quite proud of myself for managing my ‘scanxiety’.
Usually, I’m a gold medalist when it comes to worrying. In fact, I’m hoping to make it to the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, where I will trip over the podium because I’ll have jellylegs and be overthinking how to walk.
This time, I miraculously ported my negative thoughts, for about 11 days of the waiting period. Every day, I said, I’ll worry about this tomorrow - mañana, mañana - and it mostly worked.
I also thought, if it is malignant, I’ll just put my parachute on.
However, when the weekend before my Monday at 3pm appointment came round, the worries were bubbling up, like the magic porridge pot.
There were no more mañanas left. I needed a fresh bunch of mañanas.
I was suddenly certain the news would be bad, and, as my sister has breast cancer and my mum is nearly 90 and has her own health issues, I don’t have space in my life for not being in good shape. It is not allowed.
Despite the catastrophising, I managed to go out for lunch on Sunday with my sister, who was enjoying a rare day of feeling passable between chemotherapy rounds.
Her hair was freshly DIY skinhead, as it had been falling out in chunks, so she’d decided to rock the Eleven from Stranger Things look.
She told me about her current medical friend, aka Chat GPT, who we are describing as her new boyfriend. Apparently, Mr AI is very helpful, when it comes to her health questions. He’s better than Google, she says, as you’re not bombarded with information to sift through.
She’d asked ‘him’ about my lump, as I’d described it as resembling a fried egg or a cirrus cloud on the ultrasound screen, and he said he thought it sounded like a benign simple fibroadenoma.
I definitely wouldn’t recommend using AI to diagnose anything - go to the doc, kids - but I hoped her virtual reality data-harvesting beau was right.
He could be, as I reminded myself that 80 per cent of biopsied lumps are benign, and half of the total number of biopsies are fibroadenomas.
However, the next day, I was dreading the 45 minute bus journey to the South East Scotland Breast Screening Clinic and the thought of being back in their mint green waiting room - as pleasant and warm as it is - and the seconds in the cold sweat of limbo before they told me what the heck was going on.
I hated thinking that my results were already somewhere - in a computer, or on a desk - but that I couldn’t see them.
It felt like I was booked in for a visit to the gallows.
When I got dressed that day, I didn’t want to wear anything special, because then that item would become ‘the thing that I wore when I got diagnosed’.
Then, I got a random phone call at about 11am. Nobody phones me, apart from spammers or my mum.
I was shaking when I picked up, but I recognised the voice of one of the lovely nurses who I’d met at the clinic.
“It’s benign, nothing to worry about,” she said. “A fibroadenoma. You don’t need to come in today”.
“So, I can celebrate?”
“You can, but remember to keep checking regularly”.
Ah, sweet relief. I texted my sister. I hadn’t told my mum, because I didn’t want to worry her. My husband was chuffed. It was our twentysomething anniversary - also Groundhog Day - and we hadn’t planned anything, because of the appointment. Usually, we go out for dinner or do something that involves our shared obsession with stuffing our faces.
So, to celebrate, we went out for some impromptu cake and coffee. I thought it might be apt to order something like a Paris-brest, but a cookie had to do.
He was very jolly, and I realised that he’d been worried, too. That’s why he’d let me off my dinner dish-washing duty (he does the cooking) for an entire fortnight.
The first thing I thought when I woke up the next day was ‘benign’. What a lovely couple of syllables, from Latin, for well-born.
It’s my favourite word for now. Even better than serendipity, doily, melancholy or shan.
Then I felt a bit guilty, because my sister didn’t get the same news back in September 2025, and same for my mum, who had breast cancer back in the Nineties. I also couldn’t stop thinking about the other four women who’d been in the waiting room, on my last visit. I remember them all vividly.
They’d had biopsies too. I wonder if they’d had the same news, or had been unluckier. All of it is hanging on a faulty bit of DNA.
Anyway, I am enjoying not having that appointment looming over me.
I will savour the word benign for a bit longer.
I had cleared my diary, just in case of a bad result, but now I can make plans. Life is a tad more normal.
It might even be time to get back to doing a bit of light dish washing, though I shouldn’t rush things.
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