Variations in the English language

Apparently, when your doctor's office calls to tell you, "We've scheduled your biopsy for 10am on October 26," they actually mean, "We've scheduled you for another doctor's appointment in which they will examine you, look at your x-rays and records, then schedule you for a biopsy." So, my biopsy is now scheduled for November 1. That is, unless we managed to misunderstand the language again.

The surgeon seemed very nice and his fingers were warm - I guess that's all you can ask for in this situation. He was not able to say one way or another if he thought the calcifications were indicative of cancer - I think he really didn't have a clue, that he thought it could go either way. He told us it would be reasonable to biopsy or to wait 6 months, and left the decision up to us. We decided to go ahead with the biopsy - the waiting is already killing me. The good news is that he will be doing a stereotactic biopsy, and he seemed to feel confident that they would know exactly where to test and get valid results. He also said I would have the results within 24 hours, so it does seem that we will know one way or another within a week.

David and I did sneak a peek at the x-rays while we were in the waiting room. Probably shouldn't have done that. I made the mistake of looking at a bunch of example mammograms, with both benign and malignant results, on the internet this week, so now I know just enough to be dangerous (or scared, in this case). I could see 4 very small calcifications, clustered very closely together, 2 of which seemed non-uniform. I feel less confident after seeing that, because the close grouping and irregular shapes usually don't mean good news. Oh well, time to try to put it out of our minds until we get the definite results. Thanks for all the prayers - we'll keep you posted!