Abnormal pap.?!
Question: the other month I have gotten my yearly pap done. and since then its has been nothing but stress. she found a lump in my left breast which she says . she pretty sure its a cyst. ( its round and moves around) and then she calls me this week saying that i have abnormal cells in my cervic... she said they are not cancerous but they could be pre cancerous.. i am getting test done this month for everything. but what does pre cancerous mean . and what am i in for . the whole thing is scaring me like crazy.
Answers: the other month I have gotten my yearly pap done. and since then its has been nothing but stress. she found a lump in my left breast which she says . she pretty sure its a cyst. ( its round and moves around) and then she calls me this week saying that i have abnormal cells in my cervic... she said they are not cancerous but they could be pre cancerous.. i am getting test done this month for everything. but what does pre cancerous mean . and what am i in for . the whole thing is scaring me like crazy.
Okay -- I've had two abnormal pap smears in my life, and I also get cysts in my breasts, so I am living proof that chances are VERY, VERY GOOD that you're going to be just fine.
First -- the cysts. Some people are just prone to getting cysts -- cysts are just like pimples, only on the inside. They'll go away on their own, usually in a month. It's only if they stick around for months and get bigger that you may want to call your doctor back; I've had a lot of cysts and each and every one went away within a couple months. They are perfectly harmless, they just give you a bit of a scare when you're doing a breast exam.
Second: the abnormal pap smear. All that "precancerous" means is that some of the cells on your cervix are developing abnormally right now -- and if you don't do anything and leave those cells alone they COULD turn into cancer. But, they could also go away on their own.
It takes a good while for the precancerous cells to turn into cancer -- a few years or so. When you go back for your tests this month, that's what the doctor's going to check -- exactly how far down the line those cells are, whether they look like they're going away on their own, how many there are, etc. They may find that they're just barely precancerous, and that it looks like your body is taking care of things on its own, so they may say that they're just going to wait until next year's Pap Smear and look again -- if they say that, there is VERY, VERY little chance you'll get cancer and die in the meantime. You still would have PLENTY of time to take care of things BEFORE you get cancer, if you wait a year -- plus, your body may also kill those cells on its own within that year, and you'd be fine.
If they think it's a little stronger case, then they'll just take those cells out of you with something called a LEEP procedure, which is kind of like how your doctor removes a wart -- by touching something onto the spot to freeze-dry and kill those cells, and then scraping them away. That would be a hospital visit, but I don't think you'd need a cut-you-open operation -- it's usually an outpatient procedure, and you can go home right away. I've known three women who've had the LEEP done, and they just felt crampy for a day, but the next day they felt a lot better.
It sounds like you're still waiting for the colposcopy and further testing -- I've had THAT twice, and it wasn't the best way to spend my afternoon, but it was okay. But you are a long way off from actually having cancer right now -- you have a few years before it actually would turn into cancer, and you'd end up taking care of it well before then anyway.
Good luck.
the same thing happened to me also. it was my right breast that had a cyst in it and i was having abnormal paps all the time. pre cancerous means that it really isnt that much to worry about, but it could end up being bad...it turned out that i had HPV...that was 3 years ago when i was still with my husband; now that it has been 3 years later and we are divorced, no signs of anything and normal paps!! hope that everything turns out ok :-)