A Day of Answers

I tried all week not to focus that I might learn some answers today. I have focused mostly on recouping from Tuesday's surgery. I haven't had to take a lot of pain medication, but yesterday was definitely the worst day of pain so far. The port was inserted near the collarbone, so everytime I move in certain positions it gives me a sharp reminder that it's there. I had fairly limited mobility with my arms since so much of my upper chest area hurt, but was very happy this morning to wake up to the pain being much more manageable. Poor Courtney and Ryan have been cleaning, doing laundry, helping with ordinary everyday things that I found myself not being able to do, so this is much more doable being up and around. Limited activity...but doable!

This morning, I called my oncologist's office. She was pretty convinced she would get my results today, so she was wanting me to verify I would have an appointment this afternoon. When I called, they confirmed I should come in because the doctor wanted to see me. They gave no specific news as to results, just that Dr. O'Brien wanted to see me. This was at about 9:30 am and my appointment wasn't scheduled to be until 1:45, so I tried not to let my mind wander too much as to what our meeting might be like. Those few hours seemed to feel like days. I told myself, "This is it and that this is what you have been waiting for since you were diagnosed." While I was anxious to know, part of me was still so nervous for what was to come. Knowing that her answer of whether or not the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes would change the playing field so it made me apprehensive.

We got to Dr. O'Brien's office right on time. They took us back right away, but they were running behind. After close to an hour (and apologies from the nurses), Dr. O'Brien came in waiving the results paper with a grin on her face. She reported there was no cancer in the lymph nodes! What a HUGE relief! She continued on with our appointment explaining that she needed to talk to the surgeon to find out what she had seen during surgery and what our next course of action should be. Since the results just came in, she and Dr. Irani hadn't even had a chance to converse about it yet. There was some discussion as to whether we should truly start with chemo, or try to remove the tumor first with surgery. She excused herself and went and paged Dr. Irani right away so they could talk. I love that both of these women are so passionate about making the right choices for their patients and they communicate well with each other about how they both think it best to proceed. Soon, she was back and said they did want to start with chemo, the lighter version (woo-hoo!) in an effort to shrink that tumor off the muscle first and get clearer margins for surgery. She also reported that she wanted to start right away next week so we could get on it! I couldn't have agreed more.

She did a quick exam and measured my tumor from the outside, which she likened to trying to check to see how large an orange was when it was stuffed in a pillow. Funny analogy, but basically she was trying to say that things always feel larger from the outside. Even though her measurements were much larger, the original ultrasound measured it about 3 cm which is more of accurate figure of how big it is. She just wanted to have something for her to start with as we will be having to monitor the chemo's progress with periodic ultrasounds to make sure it is indeed shrinking the tumor. She also said since it hadn't traveled into the lymph nodes they could stage it as a Stage IIa breast cancer. This is not as good as Stage I, but a far cry from Stage III or IV which are more invasive.

So I left the office with an appointment to start chemo Monday morning first thing. She said to plan to spend the day there, as the first treatment will likely take close to 4 1/2 - 5 hours. Seems like a funny thing to wish for, but this was exactly what I hoped for this morning was that I could plan to start chemo at the very beginning of the week. My treatments will be spaced out once every 3 weeks, so my 4th and final treatment should be around the first week in October. I should then have a 2 - 3 week break before my double mastectomy.

So all in all, good news today! Pray for Monday that all goes well, and that the chemo is "nice" to me as we start this whole next phase. :)