Asking for prayers UPDATE 1/24 GOOD NEWS!

Prayers coming your way.  Relax & see what the ulltrasound shows before you worry yourself sick.  Hopefully, it is not cancerous but keep in mind that YOU ARE STRONG ENOUGH TO HANDLE ANYTHING.

I have a candle lit

Prayers and calming thots coming from MI.

I am praying for you that it is not cancer.  Just try to keep yourself calm, which I know is next to impossible. 

Stay calm, getting yourself worked up about this will not help your situation any. You are in my prayers and thoughts. I have submitted your information to my church also.
Keep strong. Sending you strength and healing vibes from Florida.

Calming vibes coming from PA.

Thanks everyone. I had managed to stay calm up until the dr. confirmed that yes there was a lump, but afterwards? I became a mess. Thanks for understanding, and I am just going to stay busy and try not to think about it!

Amy - I can absolutely understand all the things you're probably imagining right now too.  I have my pelvic ultrasound tomorrow morning and am hoping nothing shows up.  As others said, try not to let yourself go to the "worst case scenario" place.  The odds are greatly in your favor that this is nothing more than a benign lump and you'll be fine.  I know the waiting can seem like forever, but try to keep positive thoughts.  I'll say some prayers that you get an appt soon and that the results are clear.  Be sure to let us know what you hear.

Amy, I had a similar experience when I was 19 years old... only when I found the lump in my breast, my doctor said "You're too young to have anything wrong with you".  I immediately changed doctors... and I've had several ultrasounds (even had a mammogram but my tissue was too dense to see anything which is why I had ultrasounds from that point on) and when I got my results back that it was tumors, I had a biopsy and it turned out to be benign.  It's a scary experience but it's better to find it now rather than later on.  
 
Sending good vibes & saying prayers for a calm mind a non cancerous finding. 

They called and I'm scheduled for Friday afternoon for the ultrasound.

Cathy - thanks for the good thoughts. I am sending you some prayers and good vibes that yours will be clear as well.

Missy, Annie, and everyone else - thanks so much for the prayers and good thoughts. I will let yall know what I found out.

Amy, thanks for letting us know when you know. I have an inkling what you're feeling & my heart goes out to you. I found what felt like a huge lump on my left breast while I was just crossing my arms. DH & I were at a good friends house for a nice dinner. Needless to say I was so freaked that we had to leave. That was on Saturday night. Come first thing Monday am I called my doctor. A GP & my gyno later I was off for a mammogram & ultrasound. It turns out that I am cyst woman (hear me roar). By the time I got to the breast Dr to have the cyst aspirated the cyst had shrunken so much the Dr couldn#%92t find it to aspirate it.  Long story short, I#%92m praying that you#%92re a cyst woman like me.  You#%92re in my thoughts & try not to think the worst.  I know it#%92s so much easier said than done.  ((Amy))

Yes Annie!  She could be a cyst woman... or have calcium deposits... there are so many other things it could be (dang it, don't we women have it hard enough without all this other drama?)  Keeping you in my thoughts Amy... let us know what you find out.

Amy, I was just for my mammogram today (just ain't it the funnest thing ever?  NOT!!! *sigh*) -- I have a 'lump' that materialized about 18 years ago when I was married to my first husband.  But mine is a clogged milk duct but every single year I go thru the same thing.
 
I told Cathy the other day -- My way ... whether it is for a dog or for me is to be as "proactive" as I can be.  Dive into a 'cancer diet' -- don't wait for a yea or nay ... and if it's benign you can celebrate with Hagen Daz or a loaf of your favorite bread.  But just plain take yourself off all grain/sugar carbs and push all the antioxidants you can lay your hands on. 
 
Why?  It will give you something to do -- it's something you will always use in the dog world ANYWAY and you can at least feel like you are 'doing all you CAN do' even when you don't know.  There's no harm and shoot -- you might lose a couple of pounds.
 
I'm never good at telling myself 'not to worry'.  That's like promising yourself on a stack of Bibles that you won't think about snakes for FIVE MINUTES ... remember now .. you can NOT ... MUST NOT ... think of snakes ... no snakes for FIVE MINUTES ... you can't think about how they scare you, how ishy they are, how wriggly they are ... concentrate now ... you can NOT think of ***SNAKES**** for five whole minutes.  Ready?  Start now (but NO SNAKES for **five** minutes) ... watch the clock now and the  hands do NOT look like short stiff snakes!!!!
 
You can't do it -- the more you try NOT to think of a thing the less you can do it.  You have to distract yourself somehow.  So I invert it on myself and get myself so into 'stuff' that I don't have time to worry. 
 
Maybe that sounds convoluted but it works for me. 
 
but bottom line it can be SO many things -- cyst, clogged mlk duct, etc.  The GOOD thing is you found it and did something about it.

...my mammogram today (just ain't it the funnest thing ever?  NOT!!! *sigh*)...

I know it's not funny, but bras and mammograms had to be invented by a guy - neither are remotely comfortable![sm=rofl.gif]

I have been following Cathy's thread, and I thought about the cancer diet, but I am an insulin dependent diabetic on a very strict diet guideline. I also have a wheat/gluten allergy (can we say not fun to eat?). I don't get to eat alot of grain carbs, but unfortunately I can't eliminate carbs from my diet. I have to eat carbs (a set amount) every three hours to help keep my blood sugars level. I joke about being permanently attached to my cooler when I have to go somewhere because I always have to take what I need to eat with me.

I think that is one reason I am freaked about it being cancer. I know from reading on cancer diets for my uncle's dog, that a cancer diet would be beneficial. But I don't know how that would work with my diabetes. I have enormous trouble maintaining my blood sugar no matter what I do right now anyway. It has always been very unpredictable due to problems from a car wreck and the endometriosis that is causing major problems again. I shudder at trying to manage the diabetes with the effects of cancer and chemo. I have a really good friend whose dad was diabetic and was diagnosed with cancer. They took him off all his meds, and as a result of that and the effects of chemo, his blood sugar was so high he was hallucinating.  I know it is done, but right now the fear is....well, FEAR. And of course, the brain always zeros in on the worse case scenarios [sm=rolleyes.gif]. But, as you say, it could be a cyst or a blocked duct etc.

For lack of a better ways of explaining it, the unkown has always bothered me. I try to find out as much information as I can and be prepared - to have some base of knowledge so that when I do know what I am facing, the overload doesn't totally leave me unable to function and groping for what I need to ask. I have been burnt by doctors telling me what they think I need to know, not what I should know, that several health problems didn't get treated like they should have. So I try to be my own best advocate and be informed, but this time - Lack of knowledge fuels me fear.

With that being said, I have shied away from researching managing diabetes and cancer. Why? In some perverse way it helps me not think about it. Denial can be a good thing is some ways. *shrug* Especially when knowing makes me 'obsess' even more. I have really been overwhelmed by my health lately, and right now I am having a hard time facing the research, so the fear is always creeping around the edges of my thoughts, kind of like your analogy of not thinking of snakes for five minutes *smile*. I also lost my best friend and cousin to cancer three years ago, so it also brings up some very painful memories. She had stomach cancer, and she just wasted away. She was there for me through so much growing up that she was more my sister than cousin, so losing her...[] She was always there when things were bad, so not having her now is really hard.

Like so many others on here, 2006 was not a good year for me. Major stress from the car wreck lawsuit led to high blood sugar, that in turn made it very easy for me to get sick. The sinusitis that has been plaguing me for over six months has my body pulled down and my anemia amped up to the point that every day task are exhausting.  The prospect of having to 'manage' another health issues (trying not to say crisis here *snort*) is just burying me. It's been so long since I've had a good day or felt that there is light visible up ahead, that I'm really struggling to be positive.

I've set here and rambled (or rather whined) about all this to the point that I am not sure about posting it. So many others have it worse, but I guess I just feel like I have reached the end of my coping rope. And I guess, since I don't have Lisa to talk to about what's bothering me, I need to vent to someone. I guess yall are that someone.  Even as close as I am to my Mom, I don't feel like I can let her know how bad I have been feeling or how hard a time I am having dealing with it all. She has become almost smothering since the diabetes diagnosis and the low blood sugar episodes and losing Lisa, that I hesitate to tell her how bad it has been. I already feel like I have lost so much in the way of independece since we moved home from Bryan/College Station, that I don't want to have to deal with her stress as well as mine. I have always been the 'fixer' in the family. Go figure.  My husband is great, and we have a very open communication, but men don't always understand the need to talk things out, sometimes multiple times. That, and I don't want to make his stress worse. I know he worries about me enough as it is.

So after saying all that, my 'don't think about snakes' fix is to obsess about pedigree research on the blood lines of my min pins! Even though any breeding is years away, Keela has a nice list of potential mates now, complete with 5 generation pedigrees and inbreeding coefficients. Depending on how long it takes to get the results, I might need a larger hard drive before I am done! So here's to not thinking about snakes [8|], and appreciating the dickens out of you guys for reading and understanding.  Hugs to everyone!