The Fourth Super Obvious Hint that was not really a Hint after all – it was a loud and clear alarm bell.

On a Friday - two days after the biopsy, I got a call from the pathology department at UCSF telling me that I needed to go back in for a follow-up biopsy and they open at 9am on Monday, can I come then. I said “uh, sure, ok” and then immediately called Dr Woeber who was gone for the day. Then Pathology called me back and cancelled the Monday Biopsy and said that maybe I don’t need another biopsy. I begged Dr Woeber’s assistant to ask that he please call me at home over the weekend and thankfully (and kindly), he did. He told me that my pathology results were suspicious and that I have three options – I could do nothing now and just keep an eye on it and do more biopsies in the future. Two, I could be proactive and have surgery to remove the nodules. Three, I could do another biopsy where the tissue would be submitted to a genetic test which is new, it has a 90% accuracy rate but because it is so new, many insurance companies will not pay for the test. He also said that the “suspicious” findings of my biopsy had a low risk of being malignant – only a 5-10% chance. I didn’t want to sign up for a future of biopsies, I didn’t like the math of taking a test that had a 90% accuracy rate with a suspicion that had up to a 10% chance of being malignant so I chose surgery.