My Surgery

Hi Everyone!

These past couple of weeks have seemed like months. Just knowing that there was cancer growing inside me was driving me crazy. All I wanted to do is get it out! Finally surgery day came. Yesterday (Wednesday, January 24th), I went into Newton-Wellesley and underwent a lumpectomy and sentinel lymph node removal. When I first arrived at the hospital I had to go get the mass mapped out by having a mammogram done. Then I met with Nuclear Medicine who injected the sight with a radioactive isotope. This injection then travelled to my lymph nodes and showed the surgeon which nodes were the closest to the mass and flowed to that side of my chest. The cool thing about having this injection was that I peed bright blue several times after the surgery.

Then it was surgery time. The surgery itself went extremely well - it lasted about 1 1/2 hours. My surgeon (who by the way I think is brilliant) removed the upper right quadrant of my breast. He ended up taking more out than he had originally planned because he wanted to be sure that he removed all of the diseased tissue and so that when the section was examined by pathology that it came back with clean margins (no disease around the out edges of what he removed). I also had 3 lymph nodes taken out. Upon initial examination by a pathologist in the operating room, the nodes looked clean - no apparent cancer has spread there. The doctors cannot say yet for certain that there isn't any disease there. What will happen now is that the lymph nodes will be made into a lot of slides (50-100) and every single cell will be looked at. This way, they will be able to find out if there is just one cancer cell there. If something is found, I will have to go back in for more surgery to have the remainder of the lymph nodes under my right arm taken out.

I had to stay over last night at the hospital because the surgeon removed more than he originally thought he was going to so he had to put a drain in the wound to help relieve swelling, pressure, etc.

So for now, things are going well. The next step for me is to recover from the surgery. I meet again with the surgeon next Friday (February 2nd) for a follow-up and to go over the final pathology reports. These reports will then tell me and my doctors what the next steps will be. If there is no evidence of cancer in the lymph nodes and the margins of the mass the surgeon removed comes back clean, I will definitely have 6 weeks of radiation (every day for those 6 weeks). If there is more evidence of cancer in the margins, I will have more breast tissue removed. If there is evidence of cancer cells in the lymph nodes, I will have all my lymph nodes removed and will probably have chemotherapy. One thing at a time. Like I said before nothing is decided until the reports all come back and I meet with the surgeon and oncologist.

I am feeling really good right now. I am a little sore and stiff and can't go out and do anything crazy but I am good.

Thank you all again for all of your love and support!!!!

~Anne