I've been coming back here all day to see if you had posted an update. Sorry for the pain. Hopefully the procedure will work its magic and you will be back to good again ASAP! Did the nurse/Dr give you any answers about what is the cause?
Well, officially, here are all the gory details, just to get it off my chest and complain:
I had 30ml of pus inside my breast according to the ultrasound, which they drained with a needle inserted through my nipple with no local anesthetic or pain relief of any kind while they squeezed my boob like they were juicing an orange. Yowza. They didn't do the local because they said it kills cells and could interfere with any test results, should they get in there and discover it was potentially cancer and had to run tests on the sample. I cried my eyes out and my mother in law had to rock me like a baby in the lobby because it hurt so badly and I was totally traumatized.
They may have to do it again next week, though they say now that they know for sure it was only pus, they will be able to give a local anesthetic, so I guess that is some relief, though I really hope they won't have to do it again either way.
The condition is called Duct Ectasia, which they maintain is more likely to affect smokers than non-smokers, and even though I quit smoking two months ago, I was a smoker when the problems first started.
Basically, the milk ducts get blocked with mucus and become inflamed, which leads to the infections, etc. But I guess they don't really know why it has affected me. They could do surgery to remove the affected ducts, but they are so minute that they may not be able to get them all out and have to do multiple surgeries, etc., which could cause the nipple to collapse among other issues, so for now they are going to wait and see what happens. This is the first time I have had an abscess form from it and hopefully it will be the last time.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my disgusting rant here.
It's been a hard few weeks for me. I can only pray it gets better before Tuesday. What happened today was the stuff nightmare and horror movies are made of.
