I lay on my back in the doctor’s room, staring at the white walls with the same words swirling around and around in my head.

“How can this be happening? How can this be happening?”

“Yes, I can feel a lump just here,” says the Doctor in her Polish accent as she presses down on my left breast.

“Is there any history of breast cancer in your family?”

“No,” I answer. That has to account for something surely?

I want to grab that lump and tell it that it has got it all wrong. There is no breast cancer in my family. It has no business being there.

“There are a few things it could be,” she says. She explains to me about dilated ducts, and cysts.

I allow the words to pull me back from the brink – to rein in my habit of thinking the worst.

I like her.

Her accent, her manner, for just a moment ,they put me at ease.

As I dress she explains that the first step will be to go for an ultrasound and a biopsy.

Strangely, in this circumstance, the thought of the needle doesn’t faze me at all.

The sooner I know one way or the other, the better.

“Try not to worry about it,” Hubbster will say.

“You’ll be okay,” he will tell me.

But I don’t mind admitting, that for the first time since the Woo was born and whisked off to the special care nursery, I feel scared. Really scared.

Do you check your breasts regularly?