Ever heard of microcalcifications? Me neither, until Friday afternoon.

About a month ago, I felt a lump in my left breast. It was vaguely painful and I could feel it whether I was lying down or showering. My dad’s mom died at age 36 of breast cancer, so I’m fairly vigilant about checking myself.

I took myself off to my doctor so that he could have a feel and tell me whether it was anything to worry about. His opinion was that it was probably nothing to worry about, possibly a lump caused by trauma – ie – Jonah regularly using me as a human trampoline, but that I should go for a mammogram just to put my mind at ease.

Off I went for the mammogram on Friday. I was fairly nonchalant about it, either because so much time had passed and I’d managed to convince myself that it wasn’t serious, or because my doctor had told me it wasn’t anything to worry about.

A mammogram is really no fun. It’s undignified in the extreme. In any other circumstance, I’d wallop the perfect stranger who asked me to strip to the waist while she taped my nipples and then took my breasts in her hands to place them just so on her instrument of torture x-ray machine.

Friday’s mammogram was not only no fun, it was downright alarming.

After taking the pictures, the radiographer left the room to have them checked by the doctor. She returned a while later and without looking at me, said we needed ‘more views’ as the doctor had ‘seen something’.

“In the left breast, where I felt the lump?” I asked.

“In both breasts,” she said.

Right. So.

Three more images taken, this time more painful and even less dignified than the first. I paged through a magazine while I waited for her to come back this time, not really seeing anything on the pages. Just waiting, feeling a little ill.

And then the doctor appeared. Fabulous, I thought. The last person you want to see when you’re having a mammogram is the doctor who usually remains anonymous while he checks your (usually normal) images over.

He’s a tall man, this doctor, and it made for a very awkward conversation, what with me sitting and him standing. I sat looking up at him, feeling a bit childlike, while he explained that he’d seen something on the images and that he was just being extra-cautious… I don’t remember an awful lot of what he said, but I do know that he talked about calcifications, which are apparently very common, but that the type that he was seeing in my images could be a very early sign of cancer.

He asked whether I had any questions and I stared at him for a bit, aware that I must have looked a little spacey. I told him I could think of absolutely nothing to say to him because he’d taken me completely by surprise.

Get this, though: the choices he gave me are 1) wait six months and re-assess to see whether there are any changes or, 2) have a biopsy to check whether the lumps are cancerous. Doesn’t that sound ridiculously contradictory to you? So, it’s not urgent, but um, it’s very urgent. What the hell??

I’ve decided to go ahead with the biopsy, because I think I’d drive myself insane wondering for six months whether I have cancer in my body. I’ve already scared myself half to death by Googling "stereotactic breast biopsy", the type I'll be having in the next 10 days or so.

Pray, or wish me luck, whichever you’re more comfortable doing…

Oh and er, happy new year.