I've Had Better Mondays

Today I had my first follow-up appointment with the surgeon. I'm healing well from surgery.

She also went over the results of the pathology report. The news could be better and it could be worse.

Results

During surgery Dr. C. removed two lymph nodes, and she was hoping that they would not turn out to be cancerous. But one of them has a "micro met" (this is less than .2 mm of cancer) and the other has a 1 mm met, a very tiny focus of cancer.

So even though this is not the news that any of us wanted to hear, for being bad news it "bodes well" and is "so much better than it could have been".

I wrote those phrases down as she said them.

Overview of Treatment Plan

I will need to have chemo, probably for a total of four months, probably starting in about a month. She is guessing that I'll have two different drugs every two weeks for four cycles (that's the first two months), then two different drugs every two weeks for four cycles.

Then I'll get a month off or so and will start radiation, probably Monday-Friday for six weeks. This may be both on the chest wall and the lymph node area. I need to have radiation because the total area that the three small breast tumors covered (yes, turns out there were three instead of two) was larger than 5 cm. And also they are starting to recommend radiation for women who have some cancer in the lymph nodes, regardless of breast tumor size.

Sometime either during or after all of this I'll start taking Herceptin, a chemo drug that is well tolerated and that I'll receive intravenously every three weeks for about a year.

And then at some point I'm assuming it will be tamoxifen time, an estrogen-suppressing oral medication.

Very Next Steps

I have an appointment with Dr. N, a medical oncologist Dr. C recommends, on Friday, May 18. I may need some staging studies done, like a CT or bone scan.

I'll also continue with the stretching exercises and healing from the surgery.

I'll be thinking about what other steps to take, like reaching out to my key resource people more.

How I'm Doing

Where do I start? I'm upset. This is a lot to take in, and it's very disappointing and scary. I feel like I've been hit with a blast from a fire hose.

Hopefully soon I'll be back to doing this one day at a time thing and can stay focused on whatever is going on that particular day. Right now, I'm feeling overwhelmed.

Numbers 

My dad (who has cancer care taking experience) advised me not to pay much attention to "the numbers" (meaning survival rates and other stats). Doctors can't turn the numbers into me.

I think that's good advice, and I think that's really hard to do. But at this point I need to think only about getting through this successfully and having a good long term outcome. Obsessing over stats and negative "what ifs" will not help me.

My dad (and others) have told me that the whole chemo and radiation thing, while not pleasant, is "eminently doable". Going into this thinking it's doable is pretty essential I think.

I'll need all of your support to get through this. Thanks for being there.