Boobies

This week at clinicals, I went to a Mammography Center to see what the nurses did and what a standard procedure was like. Today the center would be doing a biopsy as a follow up to a suspicious mammogram. I was able to follow a 42 year old Hispanic woman, R., who worked the third shift at a packaging company. She was a sweetheart, and was working incredibly hard to help her daughter through law school. She was even nice enough to let me feel her breast lump before her biopsy.
Even though I enjoyed my experience, there was one part that shook me. Both the nurse and radiologist could clearly tell from the numerous calcifications on R.’s initial X-ray that she had cancer. I was even told that there was a 99% chance that this woman had breast cancer. However, when the nurse was speaking to R., she always reminded her that 80% of the biopsies turn out just fine and kept providing what I considered to be false hope. Having such intimate knowledge about a woman I barely knew while interacting with her on such a superficial level was almost unbearable. I knew that she would not be told about her cancer for another day or two, and that pathology would have to confirm, but I could not help wishing that we could just tell her now. I wanted to be there to hold her hand and to cry with her as she received this news. I desperately wanted to provide her with some hope, and to encourage her to keep living a life that she should enjoy to the fullest. Instead, all I could do was engage her in a conversation about Thanksgiving and holiday shopping to keep her mind off of the tremendous anxiety that she was feeling. The best part of nursing is knowing that you’re helping, and the worst part is not being able to help as much as you know you can.