Good news!

Today we got good news! Dr. B. called me and said that of my 4 lymph nodes they biopsied, they ALL came back negative. That means the cancer has not spread! And I don’t have to get bumped to stage 2! And they won’t have to take any more lymph nodes next week during my mastectomy! And I won’t have to get radiation! I am the happiest cancer patient (make that STAGE 1 cancer patient!) you have ever seen right now. :) I am actually looking FORWARD to my big surgery on Wednesday so I can continue the fight and get the rest of these bad cells out of me.

I’m including an illustration so you can see what this means. I know some of you are learning about all of this right along with me, so I thought this would help. Dr. B. took the sentinel (which means “first”) lymph node that was closest to my tumor, along with the 3 others closest to it. There is a whole network of lymph nodes in the breast/armpit area, but the ones he was concerned with were the ones closest to the tumor, because that’s where the cancer cells would have traveled to first, before spreading to other parts of the body. Since they came back clear, that means the ones farther away are clear too, so he doesn’t have to test those. However, I will still need to get chemo, because if one stray cancer cell escaped, it could have traveled through my blood stream, right through the lymph nodes, and ended up somewhere else. So the drugs I receive through chemo will attempt to knock out any stragglers so they won’t come back and haunt me later. But other than any random stray cells, the cancer has not metastasized to the lymph nodes or anywhere else.

My brother told me today that his friend has just scheduled her first mammogram because of my blog. It literally makes me tear up right now to think that someone could avoid all of this, I am SO happy. I know my sister has already scheduled hers too. THANK you all for listening to me. And a friend just told me she made her first donation to Susan G. Komen – you all are amazing! I wish I had acted sooner – I have known for a long time that I had a family history of breast cancer as well as other types of cancer, but I didn’t do anything about it. I wish I had gotten the gene test sooner, so I could have been followed more carefully by doctors. And I wish I had gotten mammograms sooner. But it looks like some good is going to come out of this. And hopefully when you all get your mammograms, you will get GOOD news too!  

I'm now slightly radioactive!

Well, that’s how the nurse put it anyway. It’s actually called “sentinel lymph node mapping.” Today I was back in the nuclear medicine department in the Perot building at Presby – the same place I had my MRI, CT scan, and bone scan done a few weeks ago. I was grateful to my dad for taking me to my appointments, while Ben went back to work. Ben sure did do his share last week, going to everything with me. Today my dad also got to see where Stella goes to Mother’s Day Out (at Wilshire Baptist), when we dropped her off and picked her up. He said he had never seen so many babies! :)

So the nurse told me to make myself comfortable on the table while she got the injection ready. (Doesn’t that table look inviting?!) Then she stuck a big needle right into the place where my tumor was, and injected a full syringe of radioactive dye. Yow!!! Then she took some images to make sure the dye went where it’s supposed to. This will allow the surgeon to see which lymph nodes the tumor drained to first. In other words, if and when breast cancer cells begin to escape from a tumor, they travel to the lymph nodes under the arm, and the first lymph node they reach is called the 'sentinel' lymph node. So that’s the one they check during my surgery. Dr. B. will remove it and test it while I’m asleep to see if the cancer has spread. Fingers crossed, to say the least!

The other part of my surgery tomorrow will be placing the port in my chest for chemo. That will make it easier to get my treatments without having to get an IV every time. So this means I will be one more surgery and two incisions closer to beating this! As for any glowing body parts….I haven’t seen it yet. Maybe I should try to find a black light?!

I also met with my plastic surgeon for my final pre-op appointment. We are all set for reconstruction next week, immediately following the double mastectomy. It should be about a four-hour surgery all together. And I picked up some final paperwork from Dr. B., for his part of the surgery next week. So the total for today was 3 more doctor’s appointments – check!  

Going to try to get a good night’s sleep so I can fight this battle some more in surgery tomorrow! Night night!