Exercise #4 - Painful Experience

I have been writing the exercises from a book "Writer's Course" as I become a more experienced writer. I am up to Exercise #4. It is:
Think of some of the incidents, events, and experiences in your past that were painful to you, either physically, emotionally or both. Pick one, write it up from beginning to end, be as truthful and accurate as you can not reporting how you felt. Just the incident, step by step, as it happened to you. Prose.

It was the beginning of 2004, the year in which I was to turn 29. My husband and I had moved from Orlando back to Columbus Ohio. He had just finished at a school there for animation and special effects as I had been teaching middle school math. It had been about a year since I had seen a doctor. Nothing was ever wrong with me so I went for long periods of time sometimes, not seeing a doctor. I decided I should have a physical as well as a woman's exam. I called to make an appointment with my husband's family doctor. Everything was routine. He did the pap smear and the breast exam. He said he felt a lump on my right breast and that he wanted me to come in a week after my period was to finish to see if it was still there as things change in the breast in relation to your period.
I drove back a few weeks later and he said he still felt it and gave me a script for a mammogram and an ultra-sound. At only 28 years old, mammograms usually don't show much except dense breast tissue, hence the ultra-sound.
I went to Riverside Hospital and during the ultra sound, a radiologist was called in because the person doing the ultra-sound was confused about something. He came in and had his fingers on the area with the lump and was pressing as his other hand held the paddle looking for the lump on the screen. Everything looked different shades of grey to me. He said "I am feeling it, but I can't see it" a couple times. That it all blended in together.
The surgeon said it was probably nothing, but it would be good to remove it so I wouldn't worry about whether or not it was growing or be anxious over it. I went in for an excisional biopsy. My husband told me that the surgeon had brought out a lump of tissues and showed it to him and my mother-in-law (a cancer nurse) in the waiting room and told them that this was it and it was most likely nothing, but they would have it checked out and that I was fine.
I went home that night with a huge ace bandage wrapped around my chest, but not much pain or discomfort. I slept that night sitting half way up. The next morning (Saturday) we got a call from the Surgeon who said that it was cancer and that I needed to come back in to the hospital.
Things began to move in fast forward for the next 3 weeks or so. I needed a CAT Scan, PET Scan, MRI, Ultra-Sound guided biopsies in three locations to make sure everything else suspicious looking was okay. I went to a second opinion clinic where an all new doctor, surgeon and radiologist looked at all of my charts and information and gave me their opinions.
It was an option for me to get either a mastectomy or a lumpectomy. I got the impression that they thought that the lumpectomy was good enough so I went with that.
I went in for real surgery this time. They inserted dye into the breast so that it would hopefully go to the sentinel lymph node (where they think cancer would go first if it decided to spread to another part of the body. They can remove only that node if they can find it and avoid removing the other ones.) and then put me under and removed the area around where the lump had been as well as took 11 lymph nodes under my right arm.
As soon as I recovered from the surgery, I was to begin chemotherapy. My mother-in-law talked to the doctor about getting me a port (thing they put inside you in the upper chest area that they can insert a needle into and put the chemotherapy as well as take your blood from so that they can avoid using the veins in the arm. After having the lymph nodes removed from the right side, that arm should not be stuck with needles anymore as the lymph fluid is now somewhat restrained.) which they put in, another small surgery. The chemo was to take place once a month for four months. It would happen near a Monday and then I would have 4 weeks to recover until the next injections. I got pretty sick and ended up coming in every day for the week following the injection to get fluids intraveinously. I could hold almost no food or drink down for the week after the chemo.
After the second or third round of chemo my hair began to fall out. I followed some advice and had my hair cut short, from shoulder length to what I call mom length. A short layered cut. A few weeks later I could pull a thatch of my hair right out with no effort and it was time for me to follow some more advice. I went to a friend and she buzzed my head.
A few weeks earlier I had gone to a wig store to get a color match for a wig. It was to be a bob with bangs, similar to my hair before cancer. It was 250 dollars, which was a little expensive for us. My husband's brother and sister-in-law bought the wig for me and I had a very realistic wig.
After the chemo ended, I began radiation. I needed to drive to the hospital every weekday for 6 weeks. It was a quick appointment, taking about 10 minutes start to finish and there was a small car parking area right next to the door, so I did not need to use the big parking lot at the hospital.
One day I left my keys in the unlocked car with the car still running as I went in for my appointment. Afterwards as I wondered where my keys were, I realized that they were still in the car. One time I had a long discussion with my husband about a trip I wanted to take with my chorus and the next day completely forgot and began to have the same conversation all over again until he reminded me that we had already talked about it. Someone told me it was called "Chemo brain" when you become absent minded that way.
From that time, I have had yearly or 6 monthly appointments with cancer doctors, a new one every time we move. I have had MRI's because the tissue is still dense and ultra-sounds are somewhat inconclusive as well as another biopsy.
It has been 5 years. I have finished taking tamoxifen (a drug for cancer patients who have had estrogen positive cancer that reduces your chances of getting it again, but causes birth defects) and have waited almost 3 months to try to begin getting pregnant.
The last time I visited my doctor, she felt a lump, not sure if it was scar tissue, since it is in the same place as the cancer was, and requested a mammogram and ultra-sound. These were done and they say, come back in 6 months and we'll check again. Since then I have also brought all of my films from my initial cancer diagnosis for them to compare the new films to and they say see us again in 1 year.
I am switching doctors to a new one, this Friday. Maybe he can tell me something slightly more conclusive than see me again in a year. If the first cancer couldn't be seen on the ultra-sound, why would this one have to show up? Should I have had a mastectomy?