DCIS

            

                                   

So. 

The rather bored-looking BreastScreen physician (and who, apart from every teenaged boy on the planet, wouldn't get bored shitless looking at breasts all day), tells you that the radiologist has found some tiny calcified specks on your routine annual mammogram which might indicate the presence of ductal carcinoma in situ. 

This is excellent news for the educated tit-owner, who will say things like "Phew!" and "Thank Christ I decided to go to BreastScreen!"

The next step for her is an image-guided wide local excision and biopsy, and that is more or less the end of the session. Cured.

But for the cohort of terrified ladies who still cannot be assured that their 😱 CANCER is gone and all that is required of them now is to calm down, relax and remember to continue with regular follow-up annual reviews, that's not good enough. 

If the poor anxious woman can't accept the fact that the cancer has been effectively dealt with, she will pester enough doctors until she finds one who will accede to her uninformed demands and remove her breast.

But even mastectomy, simple or radical, may not be enough to relieve her anxiety, and she will continue to haunt the waiting rooms of however many doctors  it takes until she finds one overworked poor bastard who would be prepared to do anything to get her out of his waiting room, and who will refer her to a radiation oncologist.

And if the radiation oncolgist's radiotherapy machine is the latest, brand-new machine version which has just been installed by the technicians, and if the technicians are not fully experienced in the calibration procedures, our all-she-ever-needed-was-a-wide-local-excision patient will develop radiation necrosis of her chest wall and eventually succumb to septicaemia.

And her family will devote their rest of their lives raising money to support BreastScreen.