Surgery #3

Throughout this process, we’ve had good news and bad news, steps forward and steps back. Today was surgery #3 and it was a little of both. (Surgery #1 was the cyst/tumor removal in December. Surgery #2 was egg retrieval last week. Today was sentinel lymph node biopsy and port placement. #4 will be next Wed – double mastectomy/reconstruction.) This morning my mom arrived just before 8:00 this morning to watch Stelle Belle. Thank you Mimi! She also had her sister (Aunty Lucy) with her. Thank you for the flowers, dinner, and lunch you brought, A.L.! Together they were excited to spend the morning with our baby girl. Ben loaded up the car and drove us to Presby.  I’m still not sure I could ever get through this without him. He is my rock, the love of my life, and the one always there for me. He has been there for me through tears and anger and disbelief as we fight this together. I can only hope he knows how much I appreciate him.

So we got checked in and the people immediately started flowing through our room – the nurses who took my vitals, the chaplain who said a prayer, and two volunteers who gave me a pillow that a church had made for me to put under the seatbelt across my chest in the car. It is very strange to be on the receiving end of these two nice ladies, as I have volunteered in hospitals and through Junior League for so long. It’s humbling and strange to think I’m actually the one on the receiving end of these kind people offering their help. Then the anesthesiologist came in and started my IV, and Dr. B. was next. He asked the nurse to close the door on the way out, so I knew this was going to be serious. He told us he had finally gotten the results of my gene test. He said I am BRCA2 positive. That means I have one of the two genes that cause breast and ovarian cancer. My first thought was how horrible it is that there is now a 50% chance that Stella has gotten this gene from me. Of course we will always have her health monitored closely, but now there is a real chance that she could go through this too. There is also a 50% chance that she has NOT inherited this (thank you Ben!), so until she becomes at risk in her teenage years, and we can get her tested, we will continue to think positive. Knowing I have this gene somehow does help me understand why I have to go through all of this right now, at my age. There have been so many unanswered questions – what caused this? Why did cancer choose me to invade? What could I have done differently to prevent this? And now I know. Although it is horrible, knowing I have the gene definitely solidified that I am doing the right thing to choose a double mastectomy, the most aggressive course of chemo possible, and keep all the treatments moving forward as quickly as humanly possible. It also means that I may have to have a hysterectomy at some point, because of the likelihood I could get ovarian cancer. The challenges keep coming, and I will take them – but I will cross that bridge after I cross this one!

The surgery itself went smoothly. Dr. B. placed the port in my chest so I will be ready for chemo as soon as I recover from the next surgery. Then he used the radioactive dye that was injected yesterday to find the 4 sentinel lymph nodes, and removed them so they could be analyzed. The second piece of bad news (besides the BRCA gene) is that the first lymph node looks highly suspicious. We won’t know until the end of the week for sure, but the possibility exists that the cancer has spread to at least one node, meaning that I would be classified as stage II, and could need radiation on top of everything else. Ugh!! This is so scary to me that it could have spread farther than we thought, and I have been freaked out all day by it, but I will do anything I have to do – bring it on! Cancer has picked the wrong girl to mess with!

I want to make a special acknowledgement to my friend Ashley who came over to keep Stella today for several hours, so that my mom and aunt could come up to the hospital. We appreciated that so much! Not to mention the magazines and snacks she sent for the waiting room and me, and dinner she brought us tonight. She had signed up for the first night on our Care Calendar (tonight) - which brings me to another point - thank you infinitely to Leah and all of my Wednesday playgroup mom friends for setting that up for us - I love you Leah, Mandy, Trammell, Kelsey, Sarah, Mary, Lindsey, Angele, and Claudia! (And Stella loves your boys!) And thank you in advance to everyone who has signed up to help us with meals - I can't tell you how much that takes a load off of Ben and me to not have to worry about dinner at the end of these long days at the hospital.  Last but definitely not least, thank you to my sister Tracey for the beautiful flowers – can’t wait to see you and Caitlin next week! Ben and I are overwhelmed with the outpouring of love, prayers, e-mails, texts, calls, facebook messages, and blog comments – feeling the love from each one of you gives us the strength to fight this even harder! We are trying to get back to each of you as quickly as we can, but please know in the meantime that we read and listen to EVERY message you send and appreciate it so much.

One last note. One by one, I’ve been initiated into several clubs over the last few years. First it was IVF. I thought we were the only ones in the world to go through such a challenging time, then through one friend at a time I learned that there were so many others out there that had been through it too, and that made it easier. Then when my water broke and Stella was born 5 weeks early, she had to go to the NICU for nearly a month, and suddenly I was introduced to countless friends whose children have had to be in the NICU as well. And now I am beginning to meet friends of friends, and cousins of friends, who have “welcomed” me to the breast cancer club. I just want to say I hope this is the LAST club that I EVER get invited to. Don’t get me wrong, sharing experiences during these difficult times helps me so much. And luckily my experience with the first two clubs had happy endings, and Ben and I appreciate and love our daughter more than anything else in the world. (I have a sneaky suspicion that that we would appreciate and love her no matter what though! I’m just sayin….) I just hope and pray that she doesn’t remember anything about her Mommy being in the BC club, and she can grow up innocently, the way she deserves. But the point here is this….I hope I do not have to join any more clubs anytime soon!