‘You have a cancerous tumour. It is malignant. Do you understand?” “Yes.” The children: “But didn’t you say it would be a blocked milk duct, that is what you said.” One screaming: “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” Yelling, stamping. “Are you lying? Are you lying?” And our toddler: “I don’t want you having any more doctors’ pointments, mummy.”

“Some women come to me and say, remove it all, this is a diseased part of me, cast it off, we don’t want it in our bodies any more” he says, Mr Al-Dubaisi, the surgeon, head down over his papers, then looking straight at me.

“I’m quite attached to mine,” I say, talking about the lump. Lame joke.

“I know you are,” he says, talking about the breast. “In your case the tumour is off-centre; it is very large, but it is to the side, so perhaps we can retain the nipple.”

Next to me, another man, my husband. “But what is the prognosis?” he says, his face immobile, crossed by death he has known. “I mean, do you die from this?”

“We must do some tests. We must find out whether the cancer has affected any other parts of her body. A scan, an MRI and a bone survey.”

Me: “It hasn’t spread.”

Anthony. Staring at me. Blank.

“It hasn’t spread, Anthony, I can tell.”

Mr Al-Dubaisi looks up. “That is good. Instinct is good. But we will still do the tests, so I can see. We don’t talk about curing cancer, we talk about survival. We see 75-year-olds, and we think of survival in terms of five or 10 years. Because Dina is younger I need to do better by her. I will answer more after the physical exam.”

My daughter’s nightmare. Confused, calling out: “You’re not moving, mummy, are you? I dreamed we were all on a farm, everyone was there, all of us, and you said, you just had to go off for a day, but you didn’t come back.” Falls straight back asleep. Doesn’t remember it in the morning.

“To survey the bones, they inject some radioactive fluid, and three hours later they can see your bones on a screen. So,” tentative, “of course you cannot breastfeed that day. But also, the feeding must stop. You need to understand, Dina.”

“But you don’t understand. You can’t just stop, just like that. I am tapering it off. I am not feeding from my right side at all.”

Respite. One night we take our daughters to hear David Broza, great Israeli guitarist. Our GP is in the audience. “Oh good, I was going to send you the official letter, but I won’t now. I’ll just tell you. You shouldn’t come to the waiting room any more. Your immune system goes. Just phone in for anything you need.”

Mr Al-Dubaisi can’t examine the lump. The breast is engorged, the tumour is swathed in milk. “Aren’t you expressing?”

“No. You say you want me to stop feeding. Well, if I express, then the milk production won’t stop. This is how you dry it up. You just have to sit it out, for a week or so. I’ve done this before.”

“I see. I cannot feel the lump. This is serious. I need to be able to examine the tumour, to understand it with my hands. Well, Dr Kaplan will have to measure it on the scan.” Feels under my arm. “The lymph node is mobile, that is a very good sign.”

Another doctor called Matt tries to get a needle in my arm for the MRI scan. Bashing away at my veins, his own standing out blue and thick on his forehead. “Don’t worry, I’ll call Dr Kaplan if I don’t get it in this time. I won’t turn you into a pincushion, I promise.”

He leaves the room. Ten minutes later: “I haven’t forgotten you.”

Mr Al-Dubaisi behind his desk again. “Dina, it is important that you trust me. The breast-feeding stimulates the cancer cells. Not many three-year-olds are breast-fed; it will not be a great deprivation for the child.”

• This column appears fortnightly.

• 18 March 2021: this article has been edited to remove some personal information.