My Journey to Fight and Survive: Hello to all my family and friends. Yes, I am back in “typing mode” although a little slower than usual. As Robb had updated you following my surgery, you all know that I came through that quite well. Robb, Cierra and Kim have taken wonderful care of me the last week, along with so many wonderful neighbors and friends who have reached out, visited me in the hospital, provided meals or gift cards for local restaurants or sent inspirational e-mails, cards or gifts. You are all so special and thanking you barely touches on how fortunate we are to have all of you in our lives. It would be remiss of me to not, at this point, give a special “shout out” to two wonderful friends, Nancy Cooper who has gone on too many doctors’ appointments and tests to count and Wendi Jennings who set up and organized people to bring us meals. Two of the most awesome and wonderful friends I could ever ask for!! Well, recovery has not been much fun. A lot of pain and frustration, but once they finally figured out medications that would keep the pain at a tolerable level, things seemed to get slightly better. Yesterday Robb and I went to follow up appointments with the plastic surgeon and the breast surgeon. The plastic surgeon was pleased with how I am healing but because of quite a bit of swelling and bruising still, he decided that the fill up station would not be a “go” for me until next week. However, Robb has done such an awesome job of emptying and keeping track of the amount emptied out of both drains one on each side at the surgery site, that they were able to remove both drains and tubes yesterday, only a week after surgery. The first one was definitely more than a “little sting”, but the second one I was a little more prepared and it did not hurt as much. Robb was shocked at how much tubing had been left in the surgery site (over 6” on each side). I am glad I did not look. From that appointment we headed back over to the cancer center to have our post op meeting with the breast surgeon. The surgeon was also pleased with how I was healing and so got right down to the pathology results. The right breast was biopsied and found to be benign. On the left breast, she had originally told Robb that she had removed 3 lymph nodes which appeared to be negative for cancer. Further testing actually showed that there was a cluster of 3 additional lymph nodes in the 3rd one she removed so in actual fact, 6 lymph nodes were removed in total and all of them came back negative for cancer. The suspicious calcifications were biopsied and found to be benign as well! The tumor itself was actually bigger than originally thought….it ended up being 2.9 cm in size. However, and here is the really good news…..they like to have at least 2mm of clear margins. There was only one area where the margin was 3mm (so still considered a clear margin). All the rest of the margins and it looked like they had taken 6 or 7 other areas all ended up being 10mm or more. So…although we have not had the official word yet (that will hopefully come next week when we meet with the oncologist), it appears I am “CANCER FREE”. What comes next? We know for certain that because the margins were all clear, I do not have to do radiation. As for chemo, we still do not have an answer on that. We should hear next week on one of two test results we are still waiting on. It is called the Oncotype DX test which will help the oncologist and breast surgeon determine the likelihood of cancer reoccurring. It is graded by low, intermediate or high results. We want the results to be low, which would mean that chemo would not change the chances of reoccurrence of cancer so therefore no chemo would be required, just hormone therapy for the next 5 years. The 2nd test we are waiting on is the BRCA test. This is to find out whether I have the breast cancer gene. We want this one to be negative. So my wonderful friends, although I am still physically healing, I am on the road to a good recovery. Emotionally I am trying to still come to terms with everything but I know in my heart that I made the right decision. Please keep prayers and/or positive thoughts going that the ONCA test comes back on the low level and that the BRCA test comes back negative. Lots of love......Tanis
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 22:58:29 +0000
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