2266 Passing the Boob

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

I took Miss Thunderfoot to the vet's today for her yearly checkup and immunizations (three months late). She went into the carrier with no problem, objected only a little in the car, and during the 30 minutes in the waiting room she curled up in the carrier and went to sleep.

In the examining room, however, she spat and slapped (without her claws out), and bit (gently, but threateningly), and growled so much the vet couldn't hear her heart. She's usually very calm. When I happened to mention that she hates other cats, especially males, the vet laughed. He said he had four adult male shelter cats in the next room, scheduled for neutering, and she probably smelled them.

Dr. M. was also amused that Thunder was 11 lbs 11 oz on her last visit, which happened to be on 11/11/07, and as of this month, she's 11 years and 11 months old. Lottery anyone?

I was aware that she'd been losing weight. She's now down to 8 lbs 9 oz, but the vet isn't worried because that's actually a healthier weight for her size, and he's attributing it to Jasper's exercising her more. I don't know. I'm going to keep an eye on her weight.

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I went to the doctor's office and got copies of all the breast reports. Then I went to the radiologist's and picked up my old films, and film and CD of Friday's Mammogram and ultrasound.

This is beginning to look like a game of "pass the buck".

The radiologist says there's no change from the last mammogram (2002), and no abnormalities are seen. Oddly, they still say my breasts are dense. They don't feel so dense any more.... Then after all the "no problems" comments, it says "Assessment: Incomplete; need additional imaging evaluation. Recommendation: Ultrasound..."

The ultrasound report says "No ultrasound abnormality is seen.... Assessment: Negative.... Recommendation: Surgical consultation of the left breast ... decision to aspirate/biopsy a palpable mass should be based on clinical grounds."

There IS NO PALPABLE MASS! All of this is saying there's nothing wrong! But no one wants to take the responsibility to say "There's nothing wrong." They're just passing me up the line. The surgeon gets the big bucks, so let him say there's nothing wrong. I hope he isn't scared, too, or I'll end up with needle aspiration of a perfectly healthy nipple!

I'm even more certain now that it was just an infection in a duct.

Oh, yeah, the culture results were "Normal saprophytic flora ..." which is also consistent with an infection that the immune system has stomped.

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I don't know if they did something different this time, or if the technology has improved since 2002, but these scans are so very much clearer. They used to stick a bead on the tip of the nipple, and then on the films, there was a large blank area between the bead and the start of the image. Now there is no bead, and you can actually see the nipple. Amazing. You can even see the skin around the edges.

The bright spots are calcium. Not a problem when they're isolated and scattered. One of them is a star shape (second view down). I don't like that one, just on principal (actually, it's some kind of marker, and it worries me because I don't know why it's there).

If you look where the nipple is in the third one down, there's a shaded part inside that looks almost like the nipple is inverted. I'm going to ask the surgeon about that. What is it, and why doesn't it look like that on the other views? The "chicklets" at the top in that one were exactly the same in the 2002 scans, so whatever they are, they're ok.

If you click on the scans, you'll get a much larger (life sized!) more detailed view.





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