I was sitting in a Teams-meeting when I first discovered a lump. I froze in panic, but since I had been at the doctor’s office to examine a lump earlier, I heard their voice in my head: ‘just wait and let your hormonal cycle do its thing before you do anything.’  So, I waited. A few weeks later, the lump was gone, and I let out a sigh of relief. But then it showed up again, this time in another place… But cancer doesn’t move around, I thought, and put it all down to that my body probably was transitioning into menopause and had started to do its own thing. The inevitable destiny of a woman.

 

Then the breast started to swell again, and I was called in for mammography. But I rescheduled my appointment. The new calling came immediately, and they wanted more mammography-images, ultrasound and biopsies… The doctor was very clear; ‘Whatever this is Linda, we are removing it.’

 

I was laying on the examining table with a protective mask that almost covered my eyes, and I was crying. The fear hit me hard. ‘You have been taking tests everywhere, so if you are removing it, you have to take the whole breast?’ His answer was as clear as it in hindsight was true: ‘Yes, that might be the case.’