Hope, Healing, and the Road Ahead

While recovery from surgery went well, waiting on the final pathology results was constantly in the back of my mind. Nearly a week  after  surgery , t he much-anticipated phone call from my surgeon revealed both positive and negative news.  The results from the lumpectomy on the right side were straight-forward as the invasive ductal carcinoma had already been confirmed for that side. The good news was that my right sentinel lymph node biopsy came back negative for cancer indicating that the cancer was localized to the breast tissue and had not spread to the lymphatic system. As a result of this finding, the right side is considered Stage 1A which is the earliest stage of breast cancer and has an excellent prognosis due to early detection. Because of two failed biopsy attempts on the left side , I went into surgery not knowing whether the mass on the left side was benign or malignant. During surgery, a preliminary pathology test was done on the left mass, and it did no...

Second row at The National Parks concert = SO MUCH FUN!!!  Recovery from the double lumpectomy last week has been relatively pain free and smooth. I took Monday after surgery off but was back to work on Tuesday. I’m incredibly grateful to the friends and family who have continued to check-in, brought a meal, stopped by to visit, and sent board games (my friends know me well!). I took it easy for most of the week, passing the time outside of work playing games, reading, and taking a trip to White Sulphur Springs this past weekend for the Red Ants Pants Festival. I’m not supposed to lift anything more than 5 pounds for four weeks, so Dory got stuck with most of the camp chores! I honestly feel fine, so it’s hard to remember to follow the doctor’s orders!  

I was jazzed for surgery day! When we left the house, I told my mom and Dory that I felt like I was off to a sporting competition. The last three months have been an em otional roller coaster, and I’ve certainly had my low points. On surgery day though, I felt healthy, strong, confident and ready to kick cancer’s ass!    I checked in at 10 am and headed into pre-op. I changed into a hospital gown and had my blood work done. At 11 am, Rex f rom nuclear medicine stopped by. I met him two days prior during the seed placement procedure . While lying in a hospital bed, he wheeled me into the elevator, and we headed to the basement of the hospital and entered a secure room through a door plastered with signs warning of radioactivity .   This was the strangest part of my medical journey thus far. I was lying on a hospital bed in the middle of what felt like a very random room in a basement—it wasn’t an exam room. There were coats hanging on the rack near the door. Th...

Two days before my surgery I was back at the imaging center for my “seed placement” and an ultrasound of the left axillary area. As I described in a previous post, s eed placement is also known as radioactive seed localization (RSL). It is a technique used in breast surgery to pinpoint the exact location of a tumor. The seed (about the size of a sesame seed) helps the surgeon precisely locate and remove the tumor and minimizes the removal of healthy tissue.    The radiologist used an ultrasound to insert the see d in the right breast. Because of the challenges in locating the tumor in the left breast, a mammogram guided placement was used in that breast. Essentially, I sat in a high platform chair and was wheeled up to the mammogram machine while the radiologist located the tumor and then inserted the seed via a thin needle. There were three ultrasound techs, the radiologist and me in the room —it felt like a crowd, but everyone seemed to have a job to do.   ...

After discovering during my MRI that the marker from the biopsy of my left breast didn’t actually sample the suspicious tissue , my surgeon ordered a follow-up biopsy. T he radiologist who did the MRI recommended a mammogram guided biopsy. The first biopsy was done by ultrasound. My surgeon also ordered a scan of my left axillary area to check on t he lymph nodes in that area as that is where the cancer tends to spread first.    The imaging appointment was with a radiologist I had not worked with before and it did not go as I expected. Rather than a guided mammogram biopsy, another ultrasound guided biopsy was done , and I never received a scan of my left axillary area. I left that appointment feeling really confused and frustrated .     The appointment was on July 2 nd and because of the holiday weekend , the results didn’t arrive until July 8th. And for the second time , the biopsy missed the tumor in my left breast . By the end of the day af...