"my humps my humps..."

"...whatcha gonna do, whatch gonna do when they come for you?"...

I wrote up a nice long post on the 4th talking about my journey up to this point, since so many people have asked me...how the cabbage did this happen???!! but when I went to publish it, my computer took a big ole dump and I lost the whole thing. so...here is the MUCH abridged version, which gives just the basic time line.

Week of 23- Lump in left breast discovered (thanks Honey!)

Friday June 3: Appt with Julie my PA for my (0verdue) annual pelvic, pap and breast exam

Friday June 11: Mammography and ultra sound returned as "suspicious". Biopsy indicated. Googling informed me that 4/5 'suspicious' lumps from mammograms turn out to be benign.

Monday June 20: consult with Dr. Beane, my surgeon. He told me according to the 'cancer calculator" that I had a POINT 5 percent chance of having an invasive form of breast cancer. However, the now HIGHLY suspicious lump had a 20-40% chance of being malignant.

Thursday June 23: Excisional Biopsy. The surgeon told me he removed a baseball size of tissue out of my left boob...but that it doesn't look appreciably different...how is that possible???

Monday Jun 27: Dr. Beane preliminary diagnosis: invasive ductal carcinoma. I think I need to go play the lottery with those odds!

Wednesday Jun 29: final pathology report with Dr. Beane:
Diagnosis invasic ductal carcinoma: EstrogenReceptor positive (ER+ favorable) Progesterone Receptro negative (PR - not favorable). HER2/neu Expressed +3 (means it's agressive) , Bloom-Richardson Grade=3. Grade 3 is the most aggressive type of tumor. Lymphatic blood vessels-negative. This is favorable towards negative lymph node involvement
Mastectomy on Left side indicated, prophalactic on right possible. sentinel lymph node biopsy and MRI still required for staging.

Tuesday, July 5: Sentinel Node biopsy- they injected a radioactive dye and then watched on a nuclear scanner to see which ones lit up first. My lab tech looked like a very young Chad Lowe...I think he was about 12, though. Then I went into surgery and we took those nodes out. I had general anesthesia this time so I was very groggy coming out of surgery. I kept my eyes closed the whole drive home though, and didn't have a repeat of last time's midway drive flop sweat attack. I also didn't take the 2 Norco's before I left the hospital, just one this time and that seemed to work out fine. More pain this time, but I still managed to get out of bed the next morning (well, if you consider 1pm still morning) so I could head over for my pedi with Mom.

I figure if you are going to be fighting breast cancer, you should have nice looking feet at least!

Thursday July 7: MRI to check for further involvement in left or right breast. Consult with Dr. Looby (rhymes with Booby!) for surgical reconstruction options. One of the girls at the salon has heard of him and said he does AWESOME work. this makes me happy.

Wednesday July 13: consult with Dr. Zakum, oncologist. My girl M from work tells me he is DA BOMB and I am going to love him.

"...whatcha gonna do with all that breast, all that breast inside your shirt? Ima gonna make you work, make you work ya make you work" ~Fergie, BEP.