Weird, if you can call it that

I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear what I heard today.  I’m not sure I ever heard it actually.  Dr. Jones looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.  And I said it’s not good?   And he said right.
Well I think that’s what happened.  Bobby was out of town so my BC friend Jolie came with me.  Jolie and I met while I was in the ER with my punctured lung in February.  She also had breast cancer (get it? BC friend) and is a patient of Dr Jones so it was like a big old party.  Except we weren’t celebrating. 

Apparently there are lymphatic vessels that run across the breast and there must’ve been a loose cell in one of my vessels.  And when my OB/GYN said she felt something weird, she was right.  It was the cell, growing into a tumor.  It’s the same cancer, kind of like they missed a piece of it when they did my surgeries.  It’s close the skin.  If my left boob was a clock and you’re looking at me, this tumor is at 4:00.  My last one was at 1:00.  There’s like a 2% chance of recurrence in the breast when you have a mastectomy and like a 5% chance of recurrence when you have a skin sparing mastectomy, which is what I had.  But that’s low and we didn’t expect recurrence. At least not this quickly. 

On Wednesday 10/9 I’m having a PET scan to make sure it hasn’t spread.  I asked Dr Jones if he thinks the cancer spread and he said no, that he didn’t even think the PET scan was necessary but we’re doing it.  On Thursday I’ll go back for the results of the scan and get a biopsy of another mass they’re curious about.  On Monday 10/14 I’ll have the lump removed in an outpatient surgery.  And about 6 weeks later I’ll start radiation.  

I am approaching this with a positive attitude. I am so thankful I’m not doing chemo.  I’m a little nervous about radiation but I have friends who’ve recently gone through radiation and I will lean on them during this.  It sucks to have to do this but It’s kind of like a prolonged treatment.  I had a break and now we’re finishing up. 

However, I will tell you honestly that my fear right now is that I’m dying.  I’ve been assured that I am not.  I think I’ll feel better after I see the PET scan results, which I will get the day after the test instead of a week later like I had to wait for the biopsy results.  Although waiting the week gave the doctors time to discuss my case in the breast conference on Wednesday before seeing me yesterday. 

I sent out an email last week that you might not have gotten because I sent it from my phone.  We are doing the Race for the Cure again so if you’re free on October 26^th come out and join us.  Here’s the link to sign up, team name: Kickin’ It Pink

http://neworleans.info-komen.org/site/TR/RacefortheCure/MTR_NewOrleansAffiliate?fr_id=3386&pg=entry