Last week I found another lump, in Bad Tit, right above the scar which serves as a permanent reminder – in case I ever actually manage to forget – that cancer once lived here.

Obviously I was worried, but this is not the first lump I’ve found since I found the first tumour. It’s the third. The other two turned out to be nothing more than the natural lumps found in a lumpy breast, so I wasn’t overly worried. But I was still worried…

My appointment for my first annual mammogram (I get them every year now) was for 11th December – exactly a year after my first visit to the breast clinic, first mammogram, first ultrasound, first biopsy, first surgical consultation. Naturally I postponed it. Nate said not to be a dick, but the arrival of the letter with 11th December in bold print was enough to induce the early stages of a panic attack, and I regained control by calling them and re-booking it for 23rd December, a day with little or no cancer association in my mind.

I found the lump the day after I would have had the mammogram. Cursing my irrational rationality and the fact that Nate was right again, I rang the clinic and was booked in for today. That’s pretty quick, but once you’ve had cancer, they take you as seriously as Christian Bale preparing for a new role.

Cancer brings lots of waiting. You wait for appointments, you wait for results, always with trepidation and forever with The Fear. You wait in the waiting room for what seems to be an inordinate amount of time, given that they have a new booking-in system where you get a number/letter code, and the big screen tells you which number consultation room to go to when it’s your turn. Cancer just got an Argos make-over. 

Waiting is not pleasant. But it is part of the process. Last year when I was waiting – for the first appointment, for the biopsy results – I was able to think quite positively because, having never had cancer, I couldn’t really comprehend how it would make me feel if it actually was cancer. Even though I had a sneaky suspicion it was going to turn out to be cancer, I didn’t really consider what that might mean, how it would make me feel, how it would change everything. In fact, even when I was first diagnosed, I was still very much in denial and thought of it as a minor set back that would last a couple of months, like a worse than normal virus or a sprained ankle. 

With the benefit of hindsight, finding another lump and waiting to have someone who knows what they’re doing check it out is harder than the first time. Not only because another lump brings back memories, but because it brings back all the possibilities of the future scenarios you have been forced to consider since the first diagnosis. And finding another lump means you need more aggressive treatment. It might have spread and the oncologists do not take that threat lightly. In a way that I envisage to be a bit like teaching, I suspect they are also measured by their success rates and retention figures. If only you’d kept two more patients alive this year, you’d get your pay rise. Unfortunately you’re only a grade 3; you need to work on your enthusiasm, different methods of telling patients about diagnosis, and your equality and diversity. And you don’t have enough men on your course. 

I am grateful that the clinic got me an appointment on Tuesday when I only rang them Friday morning. I am grateful that they take absolutely anything you are worried about very seriously, because I hate the waiting. I tried to forget about it; being ill helped distract me, but obviously this cough could also be lung cancer, so at times it just confirmed my fears. I tried not to get carried away in the negativity, but if I am honest, I would say my thoughts have been divided equally between everything being OK and the radiographer finding something that he felt warranted a biopsy. Because that, I knew, would mean the worst. And occasionally I went with the possibility of a biopsy, getting the results just before Christmas, (or worse still, after Christmas, and having to wait with the not knowing and The Fear all that time), the fact I would definitely have to have a mastectomy, (I’d already decided to demand a double – might as well just get rid of all that rebellious tissue and not take any more chances), and that I would definitely have to have aggressive chemotherapy that would absolutely and utterly destroy any hope I would have of bringing the Spawn Of Nathan into this world.

I wouldn’t say I dwelt on it excessively, I also watched some films and got a new fridge, but I did process all the possibilities, because I now know what they are. I understand breast cancer, because I’ve researched it in a way I would rather have not had to. I understand the emotional implications of a new diagnosis because I’ve experienced that in a way I never want to again. So I did run the scenarios, and I decided not to tell many people until after Christmas, and that I would call the GP and get a high dose of anti-depressants into my system immediately if it was going to be another Cancer Christmas. 

While I was sat waiting for my number to come up on the screen so I could collect my prize, I was looking around the packed waiting room at the other people there. They are mostly older, because a lot of the waiting room is taken up with people having follow ups from routine mammograms, and you don’t get them til you’re over 47. There were a couple of younger women there – one I thought had brought her grandmother in but it turned out it was her with the magic number – and a really young girl with a toddler and a newborn – who may have been there for mastitis treatment. I hope so, for her sake. 

I was thinking about the people who’ve come to the Feel Yourself stall at festivals and are too scared to talk to us about checking, too scared to do it. Some of them sidle off without us being able to change their minds, some we convince. I know of people who get their mammogram appointment in the post and don’t go. You don’t have to have had cancer to be terrified of it. It’s frustrating when I can’t convince someone that the earlier they find something the better because it seems so simple. Less chance of it having spread. Better chance of survival for you. Why wouldn’t you want to know? 

I want to know. I’m almost tempted to re-train as a radiographer and invest in a portable ultrasound so I can check my tits every morning before I clean my teeth, but I can’t afford another student loan. I can understand The Fear, because I live with it, and I have sat in that waiting room four times now, starting the process with a lump I have found in myself. I am eternally grateful to the friend who told me to check myself because I could be dead now if it weren’t for her, or in a whole different place in life. 

When my number came up I was relieved to see my original surgeon was back in his chair. Apparently they bring him out of retirement for special guest appearances. He checked this new lump, agreed there was one there, put a ‘X’ with his Sharpie, and sent me off to the radiographer. The radiographer was not obliged to see me today, he could have insisted I book an appointment and come back, but he agreed to see me. It was the same radiographer who identified and biopsied my first lump, and who also told me the two I’ve found since surgery were nothing, so that was also a relief. I trust him. Implicitly. He’s highly trained and he would not let me off that examination couch if he wasn’t sure. He’d do a biopsy if he wasn’t sure, I know this because that’s what he did last December. He examined me thoroughly and concluded that although there were three identifiable lumps, not one, he could be certain that none of them were cancerous. I just have lumpy tits. And I’m paranoid. Which is healthy, because I’d rather be paranoid and go through the hideous waiting and wondering than have a consultant tell me I’ve got late stage metastatic cancer that could have been cured if it had been found earlier.

The radiographer, the consultant, my breast care nurse and the receptionist all wished me a happier Christmas than last year. Which it will be now, for certain. I’ve booked my next annual check up for January 2015 to avoid any unnecessary stress over dates in December bringing back bad memories. 

Go feel your tits, go feel your balls, and deal with worry if you have to. It is definitely better to know than live with your head up your arse in the hope you are one of the lucky ones. Be paranoid, take every lump and every worry to your GP, that’s what they’re there for. Be scared if you find something, I’m not going to lie to you – it is scary. But if you are scared of checking, scared of finding something, then you obviously put some value on your life and would rather not lose it. No one wants to hear the words that can never be unheard; that your lump ‘is a cancer’ (they use the indefinite article because there are SO MANY cancers). But if you do have to hear those words, at least give yourself a fighting chance of hearing them early.