posted Sunday, 7 August 2005
I got the pathology results back from my last surgery. Apparently, there are still DCIS (ductal carcinoma in-situ) cells on the anterior margin... in English... there are still early, non-invasive cancer cells along one edge of the tissue that they took out, suggesting that there are likely additional cells still left in the breast.
The good news - the cells are DCIS, which is different from invasive cancer (it hasn't spread outside of the duct).
The not so good news - most likely we'll need more surgery. And there isn't a whole lot more tissue left in that area, so I don't think they'll be able to just go in and take out more tissue. What does that mean? Well, likely a mastectomy will be the only option, unless, the radiation takes care of the remaining DCIS (though I think I would rather lean toward the more aggressive treatment and just have the surgery, so that I won't have to deal with this again 5 years from now). A mastectomy is a bit more involved surgery and typically requires a few days in the hospital.
It's interesting... this latest setback was more frustrating and upsetting to me than the initial diagnosis. I guess I just felt like I could handle this and am doing what was needed, but new roadblocks keep shooting up. Or perhaps I am just moving through stages and actually allowing myself to be upset, which is probably healthy. For a while, I was frustrated, thinking that this 2nd surgery was a waste. But really, this 2nd surgery confirmed the extent to which the DCIS has spread within my breast. While they have tried to conserve what they could (which was my choice from the beginning), we now know that there is more DCIS than we initially thought and that more drastic surgery is needed. If we had settled with the 1st surgery, we wouldn't have known this and we would not have been as aggressive as necessary.
It's been frustrating this past week - my oncologist has been out of town, so my "team" has not been able to get together and review the results from surgery and refine our plan. Dr D (my surgeon) and the oncology NRP both think he will want to stay with the current plan and start the chemo tomorrow, and then do the surgery afterwards. As you know, I hate not having a *plan* so the uncertainty has been frustrating.
I'm in the process of loading my mp3 player with songs for tomorrow. Contents: a little bit of everything (are these artists all allowed to be on the same mp3 player?):
• Bob Marley
• Indigo Girls
• Dixie Chicks
• Joni Mitchell
• Sara Evans
• Beatles
MASTECTOMY: http://www.breastcancer.org/tre_surg_mastectomy.html
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