We were watching TV in the evening of Monday 29th October 2018 when Avril exclaimed “I’ve found a lump!”. Immediately we both got an eerie, cold feeling and we thought that she must see a doctor urgently.
The next day she managed to get a General Practitioner appointment at 08:50 so there was not long to wait. The GP said that she needed to be expertly checked and so referred her to a specialist Consultant Surgeon Oncologist at BMI Mount Alvernia Hospital in Guildford.
The first specialist appointment was on Tuesday 6th November 2018, so a week of waiting and worrying. She was asked many questions about her medical history then she went along to the Imaging Department for a mammogram. This showed what appeared to be cancerous tissue in her right breast.
A thin-needle biopsy was then performed to check what it was and a couple more appointments were fixed for an ultrasound-guided core-biopsy under local anaesthetic and a follow-up to discuss the results and the way forward.