So on the 24th April 2013 I go along to The Nightingale Centre at Wythenshaw Hospital in South Manchester.  I am called in 10 minutes before my appointment time, and have several mammograms.  The radiologists finds it difficult to get things right because of the position of the abnormallity.  I then go to see the consultant who carries out ultrasound and tells me that the mass is concerning so they do a biopsy under local anaestetic.  An appointment is made for me to go for the results the following Monday.
The following days I spend at the dentist, bird watching in Cheshire and some time in a state of numbness.

Somehow Monday arrives and my partner and I catch two buses to Wythenshaw.  The journey is bumpy and I feel sick.  This doesn't stop our gallows humour.
Once again the wait is short and we are soon taken into a room with settees, pictures on the wall and tissues.  Oh dear this is the room where they tell you the bad news and sure enough a doctor soon arrives along with the nurse from the biopsy to tell me I have cancer.  I am asked by the doctor how do I feel.  Well that's a daft question. 
We are left alone and we go for coffee when it's a pub we need.  We return to this room which looks onto the 'scented garden'.  The garden needs some special attention.
Soon we are taken along a corrider to the consultation rooms.  This is the first time it has smelled like an hospital and I fight all my bad memories of hospitals.  We wait to see the surgeon.  A smart casually dressed man arrives and tells me that my lump is 1 cm in size and they will remove it under a general anaestetic after locating it using ultrasound via a wire inserted through the nipple.  This I didn't need to know but the breast care nurse says that it is nothing compared to the biopsy. 
I am given an information pack by the nurse who goes through it all. 
I leave the hospital still the same person I was two weeks ago but now I am a cancer patient.