Mammogram and Ultrasound

Part of the shame in this cancer blog has been the lack of photos, so I'm going to try to work on that.  It's pretty typical for me to keep my camera/iphone handy to capture "blog worthy" moments to document our life story, so much so that it's even become quite a joke in our household.

However, during this story of breast cancer, I haven't been the one taking the pictures, and those pictures have mostly been of my insides and have been waiting for release from medical professionals.

 I finally got the "films" from my first set of pictures, the original mammogram and ultrasound taken on 1/14/13.  {Isn't it hilarious that they are still called films and I have to sign a release to "return" the originals to the office after sharing them with my doctor?  It's a disc, for crying out loud, and my doctor received them via the interweb, what feels like weeks ago!} I have always been a fan of science, so I'm intrigued by these scans.  {Maybe I should've gone into radiology!} I find these images so interesting and even kind of beautiful.  If only they weren't a display of a murderous breast mass! 

First, the mammogram:

I'm tempted to blow these up and hang them on a wall somewhere.  They remind me of looking into the universe and discovering some far away galaxy.  I think that's some of the calcification?  My experts will have to comment.   

The Ultrasound:
I know they told me all the specks that look like salt are calcification.  I've had quite a few ultrasounds in my day--of fetuses--and got pretty good at knowing what to look for and being able to pick out major features/organs.  I'm not so experienced at breast ultrasounds.  I just know there's a tumor in there, and we're gonna get it out.  {I joked with some friends who would tell me "Think pink! Think pink!" before each of the gender ultrasounds for my 3 boys.  The baby ultrasounds never turned out that way, and breast cancer pink was not the pink I wanted to hear after this ultrasound.  That's the way it turned out, though.  I'm now thinking pink.  Just not the way any of us ever wanted!}

There you have it.  The first pictures of my Mini Cooper 2013.  Thankfully, you won't be watching this baby grow.  She's on her way out.  Maybe we could come up with some awesome, evil names, though, like Maleficent, Urusla, Medusa, Cruella, Devlyn?