You know that feeling when you go see your surgeon for your follow-up exam for the lumpectomy he did to remove the breast cancer you were diagnosed with, and he tells you that the margins on the tissue removed indicated that he didn't quite get it all? And then he tells you that the two sentinel nodes that were removed, and tested, both came back positive for cancer? So now you have to decide if you want him to remove more tissue to see if he can get the rest of the cancer, or if he should just do a full on mastectomy.
So. That was my Tuesday morning.
There is no feeling quite like that rush through your body that you get when you receive bad news like that. I really thought that everything was going to come back with clean margins and a negative pathology. Instead, Dr. Edwards told me that the tumor was much larger than what showed up on the imaging. Originally it was between 7-8mm, but the tumor they removed was 38mm. Also, on this pathology report, the Nottingham grade came back as a stage 3, which means it's an aggressive cancer. He said there was a 25% chance that it has spread to other lymph nodes, and then there is the increased chance that it has gone beyond the nodes.
I will have to have chemotherapy. Maybe some radiation still...I can't quite remember. And because of all this new information, as well as not wanting to deal with the possibility that MAYBE it could come back again someday, I have decided to do a double mastectomy with reconstruction. My surgery could be as soon as next Friday, the 17th of November.
Last week, the plan was lumpectomy and radiation, then start nursing school in the winter. Now it's surgery, recovery, chemotherapy for 4 months, possible radiation, and no nursing school.
Life is so very very unpredictable.
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