[Verse 1]
A lump appears beneath the skin, a question with no name,
First the surgeon's fingers learn the shape, the heat, the frame,
Then the camera catches shadows — mammogram or sound waves bent,
BI-RADS stamps a number on the worry that it meant,
Last a needle dips in quiet, steals a whisper from the core,
Three different lenses, one true answer — that's what workup's for
[Chorus]
Palpate, picture, puncture — the triple that we trust,
Hands, then light, then needle — skip one, the diagnosis is bust,
Exam and image and biopsy, locking arm in arm,
Triple assessment keeps the guesswork far from doing harm
[Verse 2]
Luminal A and B are gentle, hormones feed their fire,
ER and PR positive, tamoxifen their sole desire,
HER2-enriched runs faster, an amplified, restless gene,
Trastuzumab reins it quietly, calms the chaos unseen,
Triple negative wears no badges, no receptor, no disguise,
Stealthy and unlabeled — chemotherapy's the compromise
[Verse 3]
Lumpectomy keeps a woman whole, radiation finishes the job,
Mastectomy clears the field when margins start to rob,
The armpit holds the sentinel, a scout dyed blue and bright,
If it's clean we stop right there, if not — we clear the site,
Axillary dissection follows when that scout reports a foe,
Each lymph node tells its small, quiet story as we go
[Verse 4]
Inflammatory breast cancer wears an orange peel disguise,
Peau d'orange — that pitted, dimpled, swollen compromise,
T4d, no lumpectomy, no sentinel dye allowed,
Neoadjuvant chemo first to thin the angry crowd,
Modified radical mastectomy, then radiation's sweep —
This fast and fevered subtype gives no quarter, grants no sleep
Paget creeps along the nipple, scaling, crusted, strange,
Mistaken for mere eczema till biopsy proves the change,
Underneath it, DCIS or invasive cells may hide,
And men get breast cancer too — BRCA2 rides deep inside
[Bridge]
Feel for induration, that stony, hardened ground,
Where healthy tissue should be soft, a firmness can be found,
Every clue a sentence in the body's secret book,
Surgeons learn to read it with a patient, careful look
[Chorus]
Palpate, picture, puncture — the triple that we trust,
Hands, then light, then needle — skip one, the diagnosis is bust,
Exam and image and biopsy, locking arm in arm,
Triple assessment keeps the guesswork far from doing harm
[Outro]
Luminal, HER2, triple negative — know them each by name,
Peau d'orange, Paget, BRCA2 — none of them the same,
One lump, one workup, one decision tree to climb,
Breast cancer's language, learned and sung, one careful line at a time