Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Git er done

This past Friday we had a visit with Linda's oncologist. Although we don't have a complete pathology on the tumor (that won't be available until surgery), Dr H. has a feeling that this will be a different type of cancer. She suspects this for a couple of reasons. One, it is far enough removed from the original site that this is most likely a *new* cancer, not a recurrence. Two, we bombarded the area with 2 full rounds of chemo and xeloda amplified radiation just 9 months ago. If this were the original type of tumor, it would take longer to recover from that beating. Hopefully this new tumor is E+ or P+ so we have some long term therapy options (Tamoxifen etc) open to us. Know thy enemy!

No matter if it is a recurrence or a new cancer, the breast tissue has proven itself to be problematic. I call them bad boobies, Linda calls them tainted ta-tas. In any case, the proper course of action is surgery followed by chemo (no more radiation as Linda has had her lifetime allotment). We won't know what type of chemo until after surgery and a full cellular analysis (oncotype assay) of the cancer.

We briefly interrupted our 6 days of camping to visit with the reconstruction surgeon yesterday. We discussed the pros and cons of the different types of procedures and pretty much settled on the one we had already decided upon. Unless the boss tells me otherwise, I won't go into the details of the procedure. (I'm pretty sure that if I needed an operation on my junk, I wouldn't want her blogging about the pros and cons either). Of course I'll answer any questions on an individual basis. This blog is not only about helping me but also helping others.

Surgery is scheduled for Thursday, Aug 6th (btw, never have your surgery on a Friday, statistically the worst day for mistakes). Linda is in great spirits and eager to tackle whatever is in front of her (I just follow in her wake). That means we have to cram the rest of summer into the next 3 weeks. I'm off to the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow with the guys for some deep sea fishing and maybe the odd beer. That'll be a welcome distraction. After that, the three Ss of a Central Texas summer await: Schlitterbahn, Seaworld and Six Flags!

1 comment:

Jude said...

I'll have to remember the surgery on Friday thing, that's interesting. Only a few more weeks then until Linda's ta-ta surgery, and I'm praying for "good" results!

Enjoy your fishing trip John!