Thursday, January 12, 2012

Results are in

well finally got some good news: the bone scan and chest xray show that the cancer has not spread from my breast to my bones/skeleton or my lungs and chest.  So that is GREAT NEWS!  I was for sure that they were going to tell me my bones were infected as I have such bad joints and back.  But YAY, my prayers were answered and all the love and support and prayers I've been receiving from family and friends have made a difference.  I asked the dr about more info on the type of breast cancer I have - like the stage, grade, size, receptor etc... all this stuff I see other survivors talking about.  He said that he can't tell me any of that since all they have is small amounts of tissue from the biopsy.  So, I'll have a mastectomy on January 27th and when they do that, they'll know more about the tumor and the stage and everything else.  He says we are pretty sure you are not a Stage 4.  During the mastectomy  they'll do a sentinel lymph node biopsy to see if the cancer has spread to my lymph nodes.  If it has, they'll remove all 25 or so lymph nodes from under my arm.  If it hasn't, then they won't remove any more since the prognosis is good that if the sentinel lymph node (the node that feeds the tumor or vice versa) doesn't have cancer, then the others don't either.  So I won't know til I wake up whether the lymph nodes have been removed.  I've decided on mastectomy over a lumpectomy/radiation simply because I don't want to have to continually be checked out for the other breast and worry about getting cancer again.  So I'm going to try to get a bilateral mastectomy (both breasts) so it's all gone and done with.  Just have to make sure my insurance covers the other breast.  If it doesn't not sure what I'll do; I guess it depends on how much it costs.  I don't care about reconstruction if both breasts are gone, but if I only have one breast, then I might consider it as I don't want to be lopsided!  The thing is, if they're going to build me a new breast....I'd want a good one, not a sagging one like I have on the other side...let's get them both perky, heh?

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