As if the premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) weren't enough, I began to believe I might have inflammatory breast cancer. Imagine being consumed with anxiety, exhaustion from no sleep due to the anxiety, the PVCs and a newborn baby and then this happens...

Tragically, it was during this time that a mom from my children's school was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. The entire community wept for this wonderful, young mom - me included.  I couldn't imagine what she was going through, she also had three children almost the exact ages of mine.  I had never heard of this disease before as it tends to be a more rare form of breast cancer, but the symptoms are eerily similar to mastitis.  During one of my conversations with this mom, she told me her sad story that the doctors had been treating her "mastitis" for months but it kept recurring and finally they realized it was because it wasn't mastitis at all but rather, inflammatory breast cancer.   As I held my newborn baby she told me if I ever "get" mastitis, be sure to question the diagnosis.  And so, a few weeks later, for the first time in all the many many months of breastfeeding three babies I developed mastitis.  If you've ever had anxiety, you can imagine that by now my postpartum anxiety is raging.   Fortunately in my case the antibiotics seemed to work and the mastitis symptoms disappeared.  Slowly I began to realize I didn't have inflammatory breast cancer - thank you God!

But then again the Mastitis!  Oh yes, my worries came through for me once more...this time I was sure it was inflammatory breast cancer and that the same thing was happening to me - a misdiagnosis!  I was given the antibiotic in the emergency room but booked an appointment with my family doctor.  By now the heart is flipping daily, I have no results from the heart tests and now I am being told I have mastitis again....I am sure I must be dying.  The postpartum anxiety rages on.  When I walk in to see my family doctor she takes one look at me and I can see the look of shock on her face.  No more am I the well-put-together mother-of-three, instead I am transformed into a zombie. The picture drawn by my 5 year old daughter that week at school confirms it - when I ask about the several dark brown semi-circles that have been carefully drawn under my eyes, my daughter's innocently replies, "Those are the bags under your eyes Mommy!" My doctor comes right out and asks me "What can I do for you?"   Me, being the well-informed patient that I, and frankly all other anxiety-ridden people usually are, tell her I want a needle-punch biopsy to rule out inflammatory breast cancer. The procedure is invasive and involves taking tissue from the breast to be examined because this type of breast cancer forms in layers not lumps so mammography, breast exams, etc aren't effective ways of diagnosing.  My doctor appeases me and performs the biopsy and of course....I am fine.  I feel relieved but still my postpartum anxiety is getting the better of me.

The interesting but scary thing is that since you're the one with the anxiety, you don't always get that you are being anxious for no reason that seems logical in anyone else's mind.
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