Just the Facts, Ma'am

By the time most of you read this, I will be in surgery.  Thursday, December 11, 2014, at 7:30am, I will have a bilateral mastectomy. That means both my breasts, including nipples, will be removed.  The breast surgeon will remove one lymph node, have it biopsied while surgery is going on, and find out if any cancer cells have spread to it. This will help determine staging of my cancer, which are those numbers you hear - one, two, three, and four (which is metastasized cancer).  

We are expecting a stage one.  We are praying for a stage one, no evidence of disease spreading, and no evidence of disease in the other breast.

As I have opted for reconstruction, the breast surgeon and the plastic surgeon will both be in the operating room. As the breast surgeon finishes, the plastic surgeon will take over, inserting expanders into my chest between two muscles.  These expanders will allow the muscle to gradually stretch, so that permanent implants can eventually be put in.  That process can take months.

In the meantime, I will be healing and awaiting results on my tumor.  The breast surgeon will send my tumor (which is small, 1.7 cm - that's good) to a lab which will Oncotype it.  This test is really, really neat.  See, breast cancer is really rather rude.  You can remove it, and years and years later it can return or metastasize  even though you took it all out! This test tells you how likely it is your cancer will return.  This helps determine whether you need chemotherapy.  So, I will not know when I wake up from surgery if I need chemotherapy or even radiation.  

My hope is, of course, that I need neither.  My hope is the surgery goes well, I heal fast, and my cancer is so tiny and nothing that I never ever have to deal with it again, and instead I can spend my time and energy advocating for research into stage 4 breast cancer. 

I am being treated by really good surgeons at a really good cancer center in NJ.  It's Cancer Institute of NJ, aka Rutgers, aka Robert Wood Johnson.  I like my surgeons and feel comfortable with them.  Both their coworkers and their competition praise them.  My breast surgeon said to me, at our first meeting "I'm not just treating your cancer, I am treating you as a person".  My social worker heart warmed at that!

So those are the details to the most frequently asked questions.  I hope it helped to have that info there for you.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the love and support. This is a huge, huge deal to me, and it's been hard at times and sad and there is definitely loss there, but I am constantly amazed by the love I have received and how much it has helped me cope.

Stay tuned to the Facebook page for updates - it's right here - Not A Cutesy Slogan and if you would like to help out if we need it, my friends are coordinating things over here: Lotsa Helping Hands.

Be well, and I will see you on the other side of surgery.