The Surgeon

Today was my second meeting with the surgeon. My mom went with me and I'm really glad she could be there because she's been through this before and knew what questions to ask. I'm not going to pretend I didn't zone out a time or two during this appointment. At one point I was thinking "why am I even here? Who's appointment is this?". Its easy to be in denial about what is going on. I think I'm bouncing around the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, bereavement, acceptance). I think I went through bargaining before I found out my diagnosis for sure. I went through it in my head: what I was going to say when the doctor said it wasn't cancer it was _____, how I was going to feel and how I'd probably cry more than if they told me it was cancer. I try to spend a lot of time in acceptance because its easier to keep your eye on the prize in that stage.

I like my surgeon a lot because she says thinks like "cotton pickin" and she called my cancer cells "fuckers". I appreciated that because that's how I feel about them too! This first picture is the results of my biopsy which we all ready knew. Invasive ductal carcinoma. The most common type. Its estrogen and progesterone positive and HER-2 negative which is a good thing (if anything about breast cancer is a good thing).

I'm adding this second picture in because this is the surgeons drawing. Have you ever seen that many boobs drawn on one paper before?

So basically my options are lumpectomy and radiation or mastectomy and maybe chemo. The chemo is going to depend on if the cancer spread to my lymph nodes. Also if you can see the drawing on the top right of the paper with the star and a circle around it- that represents the lump. Part of the lump is cancer and part is pre-cancerous cells. How many of each will determine if I need chemo or not and will also help stage the cancer. Right now the surgeon thinks I'm at stage 2 based on the size of the lump alone but if the lump is mostly pre-cancerous with just a little cancer then it could be stage 1 if it hasn't spread to the lymph nodes. Confused yet? I'm surprised I can remember all of that!

I made the decision to have a mastectomy. The biggest reason I want the mastectomy is because of where the lump is and how much they would probably have to remove. The surgeon finally made me look at my mammogram and you can really see how bad it looks. The lump itself is less than 3 cm (approximately) but on the screen looks enormous. And as my surgeon said, she doesn't want to leave me looking like a donut. The results of the genetic test will determine if I need to have a mastectomy on just the cancer side or both sides.

The next steps are to get the results of the genetic testing, get an MRI on Tuesday, meet with the plastic surgeon on Wednesday and with this surgeon again on Thursday. Surgery will probably be scheduled for August 22 and I will have to stay 1 night in the hospital (I think they call that a vacation!).