My Update; Surgery

Good morning, everyone.

Some of you may remember about 6 months ago that I had found some lumps in my breast. I got them checked out and they were just little cysts, and were no big deal. Well, a few weeks ago, I found a big lump on that same breast, but didn't panic, because I knew my 6-month check up was coming due. I had the check up, and I was told that the lump that I found was scar tissue....no big deal. BUT, under that were several calcium-like deposits.

The dr. referred me to a hospital out in town (Baptist Medical) and I had an appointment to go over my medical history and my mammograms/sonograms and set a date for a biopsey.

When Baptist re-took my mammo and sonograms, they figured out that it was one lump, NOT scar tissue. The lump turned out to be rather large.

So, I got my biopsy done last Wednesday. They took 6 samples from the one large lump and then drained 2 cysts. Then, the dr. saw on the ultrasound that the gland under my armpit was "unusual" so she took 2 samples of that. They called me on Thursday with the results.

I do have breast cancer.

The technical name for the type I have is Invasive Ductal Carcinoma.

The dr. seemed pretty positive that I should be able to beat this thing, though. She said I have a rough year ahead of me, but hopefully, by this time next year, my life should be back to normal. Apparently the type of cancer I have is one of the most common, so they're not dealing with anything new. She said that I'm carrying an 80% survival rate.

Oh, and the biopsey on my lymph node came back negative, so they sent me to get an MRI done on Friday. They also wanted to get a better idea of the size of the tumor. They piddled around with the results and finally called me yesterday afternoon (Tuesday).

The tumor that I have is larger than they first suspected from the mammograms, and although the origional biopsey on my lymph node came back negative, they said that it still looked irregular. For those who are unfamiliar, the reason they're concerned about this is because if the cancer is contained in just the duct, it should just "roll" out when they remove it. If it has begun to spread, the first place it will go is to my lymph nodes. So, they said that I need to get what's called a Sentinel Node Biopsey done. For those interested in more info, try this link: http://www.cancernews.com/data/Article/202.asp Once you go to that page, scroll down to where they describe the biopsey itself.

So, anyways, after that phone call, the nurse on the base set me up with a consultation appointment to ask/answer questions on Thursday. Once I called Tim and told him that, his reaction was "WHY THURSDAY!" They'd waited 4 days on my MRI results and then found out it's worse than expected, and now they're waiting two more days to do a consultation on thursday??? So, needless to say, he made some phone calls to some important people.

Which leads to why I am writing to you all in a mass e-mail instead of calling everyone individually like I'd origionally planned. I am headed in to work with Tim tomorrow, and as soon as my Dr. on base gets there, he's giving me a referral to go and get this Sentinel Node Biopsey done, and hopefully get the labs back from that ASAP and then get the tumor taken out and the lymph nodes if necessary. Because of the size of the tumor and the fact that cancer can get worse very quickly in younger people (your cells grow at a rapid pace when you're younger, both good cells and bad), we want to get this taken care of as soon as possible.

So, I won't be answering my phone for the next few days, but if anyone would like to call and leave me a message, I will be checking those. Please keep me and my family in your prayers. This is a tough time for us all!

Love, ~Brenda