Where to begin? On the evening of July 21st (surgery eve) I decided to check the clip placement in relation to the mass. For those of you who don’t know about breast clips. Whenever someone has a breast biopsy they insert a tiny (1/4th the size of a staple) titanium “clip” that marks the biopsy site. The clip is useful in that if the pathology comes back benign (normal) they leave it alone and it marks that the area so on future Mammograms the radiologist knows it’s been previously biopsied. If the pathology comes back abnormal they tell the surgeon to “go get the clip”(with alittle more guidance). Back to the night before.lol Scanned the mass, found the clip..alittle bit off to the side of the mass but no big deal (although wished it was in the mass). But while scanning for the clip, found another mass! This was at 4:30pm and the office closed at 5pm. Thoughts start running though my mind. If I proceeded with surgery for the first mass they might get some of the second mass and ruin margins if it was something that needed to also be removed. My heart sank to have to cancel, but ultimately needed to know what this second lesion was. The morning of the “surgery date” we decided to do the second biopsy in place of surgery. Everything with the biopsy went smooth and second clip was placed perfectly in that mass. Pathology came back as benign breast tissue, ductal hyperplasia with focal PASH. The radiologist recommended to follow this lesion and leave it in. As soon as the pathology came back I called the surgeons office to get back on the surgery schedule. They set it for August 22nd. Kids, work and life kept me pretty busy and helped that month fly by. 

Surgery day was Tuesday the 22nd and started with a 6am arrival. Got registered, taken up to pre-op, then prepped to head down to get my needle localization. A needle localization is a wire that is inserted into the breast and passes through the mass to help guide the surgeon during surgery. Everything with the needle loc went great! Seriously, it was textbook perfect and I felt really good going into surgery! After the loc was done I was taken back to mammo to get a few images with the needle in place before heading back up to pre op. Arrived back up to pre-op just in time for Dr. Patel to do a last minute chat before they take me back. I hadn’t seen her since my initial appointment back in June so it was nice to see and talk with her. Finally got to ask her if she’d ever seen a mass with my pathology before and surprisingly said no. I was shocked because she did her residency at The Cleveland Clinic, which is one of the top 3 breast hospitals in the nation. Anyway, finally got taken back to surgery and had the best little nap ever. lol Woke up in recovery in a small amount of pain but nothing I couldn’t handle…and of course the pain meds helped. Everything with surgery to me went so smooth! I was so happy to finally have this out, heal and move on. 

Soooo I told myself I wasn’t going to look at the pathology results prior to my follow up appointment and let her go over them with me. But on Sunday afternoon I decided I wanted to look (I waited 5 days..haha). I just wanted to see that confirmation that she got it and prepare with any questions I might have for my post op appointment. As I read though the final pathology I was in shock…no clip was in the tissue, no mass was in the tissue (except a 2mm incidental papilloma) and the wire had fell out of the specimen??? My first thought was I did this whole surgery for nothing! So many mixed emotions and questions. Like when did the needle fell out? At the start of surgery? Middle? Why could they not have called in sono for guidance. She didn’t get the clip? Why would she close me up knowing the clip wasn’t in the specimen? She got the wrong area because the wire came out? This mass is 2mm under my skin, how was it that difficult to get? 

 August 30th was my post-op appointment and I was definitely ready to hear what happened. Although I didn’t end up asking all the details because ultimately it doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. Just crazy we had one shot at this and it was unsuccessful. It seemed so easy with being so superficial (under the skin). She did say the wire fell out and that she was sorry this happened. When looking at the mammogram from the needle loc we can now confirm that the 1st clip is not in the mass. This can me due to “clip migration” or not being placed accurately during the initial biopsy. So that clip will stay randomly in my breast forever. Yay. lol 

The new plan... We definitely have a few limitations now with losing the mass. One, mammo is no help because the clip is not in the mass and my breast are so dense you can’t see the mass without it. Two, we can only see it on ultrasound but I have so much post surgical change right now that it makes it hard to find anything. Given that area of my breast has been a little beat up with surgery. Last, she doesn’t want to go back in blindly and carve away good tissue to possibly get it. So we are going to do a mammogram and ultrasound in 6 weeks to check the post surgical change and see if we can re-find the mass. If we find it we’ll set another surgery date, insert a reflector (basically a tracking device) a week prior to surgery instead of a needle loc and re attempt. If we are unable to find it at the 6 week sono we will do  6-month interval ultrasounds until the mass decides to pop back up to remove. It wasn’t seen in the tissue from surgery so we know it’s still in there, we just have to give things time to settle and or wait for it to get large enough for us to see it again. Fingers crossed we can see it soon. I was sooo ready for this “bump in the road” to be over.