cancer – day 24

7AM

Now that was cool. I just got off the phone with Faisal Asrar, an OLD friend I haven’t seen or talked to since sometime in 1996 or so, about when I left Minnesota and moved to California. I didn’t even think his e-mail address would work, but I bcc’d him on the surgery e-mail last week anyway, and surprisingly enough, he got it, and he called me from Dubai this morning! Before 7AM this morning actually, but that was fine, I started working at 5AM today, sooooo much to catch up on and get ready for Chain in case I have to take a lot of leave for chemo. Wow, I have made some fantastic friends in my life, it feels so good to be reminded of that by something like Faisal’s phone call.

11:30PM

Good news!!! The sentinel lymph node and adjacent lymph node biopsies were both negative for metastic tumors!!

I’m hoping this means a less tortuous chemo program, but I won’t know what the chemo schedule will be like until at least May 27th when I see the medical oncologist, Dr. Soe.

As for the surgery, the pathology report shows they completely excised the invasive ductal carcinoma tumor, which, because of the negative lymph node biopsy and remaining size (less than 2 cm) is considered a Stage 1 cancer. Now that I think about it, the original tumor was more than 2.5 cm, but they took as much of it out as they could during that first biopsy, but I guess what they stage the cancer by is what they excise during the surgery. They also took out a second tumor that was ductal carcinoma in situ, which is Stage 0 cancer that hasn’t yet become invasive beyond the ducts. So they removed two tumors, one stage 1 and one stage 0.

But Thayer was clear that stage for stage cancer is more aggressive in young women, and essentially a stage 1 for me is like a stage 2 for someone older, and so I definitely still have to do chemotherapy. He did say there was a slight possibility the medical oncologist may not require chemo, but I got the impression from Thayer that he would insist on a second opinion that did require chemo, if Soe didn’t order it. Thayer is adamant that we do everything possible now to prevent a recurrence. He told me once that studies show that they basically have one really strong chance at bat when a cancer is first discovered, so with young women especially they do everything possible to hit the ball out of the park. Guess Thayer is more of a baseball fan than I am, but at least I got the analogy, eh?

So it was the best possible news we could have gotten today!