Brian and I were set to meet with Dr. Hawasli the following Tuesday morning but before we did, I had to have yet another mammogram. When Dr. Patrick performed the biopsy, he placed a clip about the size of a grain of rice near the mass to help mark its location. One quick scan showed that it was exactly where it needed to be. So I gathered my things and moved to an exam room where I’d meet with the doctor. A nurse brought my bewildered looking husband back and we began to wait.

Dr. Hawasli came in a few minutes later, her first appointment having run over a bit. She was every bit as kind, calm and gentle as she had been on the phone when she delivered the news the previous week. We talked for a few minutes, went over family history and then another exam. My boobs hadn’t ever seen so much action in a week.

I got dressed when the exam was over and Brian and I were led to a consultation room where we’d learn more. We sat at a table and looked around to find a bucket full of what looked like breast prostheses, which I later found out are called Knitted Knockers, and a handmade quilt on the wall with sayings like “breast cancer can’t take my joy” and other missives.

I took it all in, looked straight at Brian and told him that under no circumstances was that going to be me. I wasn’t changing my wardrobe to pink, wearing clothes and pins with cancer ribbons on them or turning toward a holistic lifestyle. I was going to remain me – the same weird girl who loves football and basketball, wants to work out and then watch Marvel movies on a Friday night. He gave me a look of bewilderment – like he couldn’t believe I even had to say that out loud – and just told me he already knew.

Right after that the door opened and we met Amy, the nurse navigator who’d be by our side throughout this journey. She prepared us with a binder that would eventually contain the information that we’d get from all of my doctors. Then Dr. Hawasli came in to give us all the details.

The first thing she said to the both of us is that she was going to give us a lot of information and realistically, we’d remember less than a quarter of it. She wasn’t lying – there was a lot to know. The pathology report had come back on the tumor showing that I had triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). This is the kind of cancer that doesn’t have any of the hormone receptors that are normally found in breast cancer.

The way Dr. Hawasli (and later the CDC) explained to us is that you can think of cancer cells like a house. The front door has three locks or receptors – one for estrogen, another for progesterone and another for a protein called human epidermal growth factor (HER2). If my cancer had any one of these three locks, there are a few keys to treatment – like hormone therapy or other drugs – than can be used to help destroy the cancer cells.

Since my cancer is triple-negative, it means that none of those locks are there and chemotherapy was my option. The pathologist was going to run the tumor markers again just to be sure since I was young and healthy, but this was most likely the road we’d be heading down.

With that in mind, we discussed the first step in my journey – getting a port. This is a device that a surgeon places under the skin just south of your collarbone so that it’s easier to deliver the chemo each week. (Trust me, this is much more preferable than being stuck in the arm each week.) It’s an outpatient procedure done under sedation (thank goodness) and I’d be in and out in a couple of hours. No big deal, unless you then consider that it’s just the beginning of the road. Before getting a port though, we needed to get the final pathology back and meet with my oncologist, Dr. Jodie Barr, on Friday afternoon. Great. More waiting.

Dr. Hawasli gave us more information (most of which I don’t remember) and then we were off – well, almost. I had to get one more scan – a breast MRI – which was going to take about an hour. Brian went home to get changed for work while I was going to be popped into a tube with a ton of loud bings and bangs signifying that some sort of imaging was taking place.

I’ve had an MRI before, so I expected that I’d pop a gown on, lay down on the bed and hang out there for 45 minutes or so. I was right – at least about the gown part. Getting a breast MRI is akin to kneeling forward, laying on a wedge and hanging on for dear life for about 30 minutes. And when they ask you what kind of music you want to listen to, don’t say 80’s pop. I quickly realized my mistake when I wanted to dance around during “Come on Eileen” and was grateful when the music cut out after that first song.

I was also grateful that I’d had the presence of mind not to drink any coffee that morning. With my luck, I’d be perched in the MRI and it would be at that point my body would decide that it was the opportune time to poop. Yes, my mind works that way and yes, it was something that I’d thought about. Repeatedly.

Fortunately for both me and the very nice MRI tech, I didn’t dance, I didn’t poop and the scan went off without a hitch. Brian came back to get me, dropped me off at home and went to work. And that was that. It was time to wait some more.