The Follow up Visit

Monday, Sept. 26: Today I go for a follow-up visit with the surgeon. I get all the pathologist reports too so I am anxious for that. Robert and I go to the office and she says that everything looks good. I forgot to mention that I have no stitches ( on the outside) and no bandages. The incisions are held together by dermabond. Best stuff EVER!! I have a few stitches where the drain is held in place but that is all. I get the drain taken out. They snip the stitches and she yanks on the drain tubing...HOLY COW did it hurt. It was up there about 6 or 7 inches Robert said. He said she pulled that tube out like she was starting a lawnmower. That few minutes of pain was worse than the mammogram machine for 30 minutes! At least it is out. So I find out from my path report that my tumor is hormone recepter positive, HER2/neu negative (more on that later), stage 2 because it was in the lymph node. I had 9 other lymphnodes taken out and they were all clean. So some really good news there. Hormone receptor positive means that it takes estrogen adn progesterone to grow. That means that I will take tamoxifen for 5 years after chemo and radiation. HER2/neu is a gene (not a hereditary gene) that is measured to show how fast the tumor multiplies. You want to be negative-not positive. She also gives me some not so good news. I have to go back in for more surgery. In addition to the mass that was taken out, she took out another piece of something that didn't look right. It tested as cancer so they have to go back in there for clean margins around that piece. I leave sort of confused about that. I can't seem to understand what she means--is it another tumor or what? I asked her several times and I never could figure it out. I go to the oncologist tomorrow and hope to get more answers from her.
Tuesday, Sept.27. Robert and I head to the oncologist. Her name is Dr. Maity. She tells me that she needs to do an ultrasound of my heart and a PET scan. After she gets the results back she will tell me what kind of chemo she recommends but tells me that it is usually 8 treatments:one treatment every 3 weeks. I try to talk about the whole "which mass was malignant" question. She just got my chart so she wasn't all that knowledgable yet. She gave me copies of all my path reports and they told me they would call to schedule all the tests.
Wednesday, Sept. 28: I get a call from the surgeon's office to see if I would be available for surgery this friday. Well, I guess so...I was supposed to go on a girls weekend to the mountains in Utah but I guess this is more important....So here I go again. I call Robert.."guess who gets this friday off work again??"