Waiting

posted Thursday, 7 July 2005

I'm waiting for final pathology results from the surgery.  From a preliminary look, Dr D was able to tell me the following:
They removed ~14 lymph nodes.  Of these, one was positive (meaning it had cancer in it).  They believe breast cancer spreads to your body through the lymphatic system, so they classify cancers based on:

1. The size of the tumor
2. Involvement of the lymph nodes
3. Whether it has metasticized (spread to other organs)

I don't have an official word, but my understanding right now is that mine is:

1. Likely to be under 2 cm (which rules out Stage III, which is for tumors > 5cm
2. The cancer has spread to the lymph nodes, but only 1 was positive (so that means Stage II, as opposed to Stage I, if the lymph nodes were clean or Stage III, if many lymph nodes were involved)
3. None of my other organs showed signs of cancer (if they had, that puts you in Stage IV)

So my *expert* opinion is Stage II invasive ductal carcinoma (which is the last of the "early stages")... I will be meeting with an oncologist in the near future and discussing what type of chemo (how often, how long, which drugs). 
There is apparently some confusion about whether the "margins" of the tumor were clean.  They take out a substantial margin of "normal breast tissue" around the tumor to make sure that they "got it all".  The pathology report was contradictory, so Dr D is trying to follow up with the pathologist.  If the margins are not clean, they will need to do a follow-up surgery (but we may start the chemo first, giving me some more time to heal from the initial surgery before we do that). 
That's all I know for now...
Here are the links for my fellow dorks: 

http://www.breastcancer.org/cmn_sta_idx.html
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/breast/Patient/page2