The Beginning

Since I decided to blog about what is going on, I guess the best place to start is the start.  This will bring everything up to date.
March 9th - our 33rd wedding anniversary.  We hadn't planned on anything special, just a quiet evening at home.  Mike had to go back to work the next morning for his 2 week hitch.  The cows needed another round bale and it is so much easier when the person on the skid loader doesn't have to get in and out to open and close gates or cut the baling twine.  Mike operated the skid loader and I got the gates and cut the twine. 
Chores done, we walked back to the house together.  My shirt was covered with hay and I was brushing off as we went.  That's when I found it.  Good grief, it was so obvious!  How could I have missed this big hard lump!?  I almost couldn't believe it was really there, but when I said something, Mike had no trouble finding it either.  I knew, immediately, that this was trouble.
I called first thing next morning and managed to get an appointment to see a Dr. at the women's center in Altus the very next day.  I thought that was really something, a new patient getting in that fast.  I had my diagnostic mamo on the 17th.  There is a standardized scoring system, called BiRads, that is used to score the results.  The scale is 0 to 6.  I scored a 5.  This means that the appearance of the lesion on the X-rays and the ultrasound has a 95% or greater chance of being a malignancy.
Dr. Burton's office called me within a few minutes of my leaving the imaging center.  She wanted me to come back to her office.  I already knew that the lesion was malignant.  I knew from the start.  The call, coming so soon after the imaging, was confirmation, though I didn't need it. By the time I left her office, I had an appointment with a surgeon.
After a visit with the surgeon, I was scheduled for surgery to remove the mass on the 25th.  Of course, it was exactly as I expected and preliminary pathology showed ductal carcinoma.  The surgeon got good clean margins.  Mike was still holding out hope that it wasn't cancer, in spite of everything I had told him in order to prepare him, so it was rough on him when the Dr. came out and told him. 
After my post-op visit, I was scheduled for the CT and bone scans.  For me, this was the scary part.  The scans themselves are not a big thing, except for drinking that nasty stuff for the CT scan.  They aren't painful, they don't take long and, since I am not claustrophobic, they aren't especially stressful.  They were scary because this is where the rubber meets the road.  The results of these tests would tell me a great deal about the survivability of my disease.  These tests are to look for metastatic lesions.  Had the cancer already spread?
I didn't have to wait long.  The surgeon called me the next afternoon and told me the scans were clear.  Hallelujah!  Huge, positive news.  Now it was time to make some tough decisions.  Mike had told me to make whatever decision I felt was the best and he was fine with it, just as long as it improved the chances for a cure.  My surgeon was great.  He answered my questions and was able to quotes studies and statistics when I asked.  I am all about the numbers...He patiently discussed my options.  I chose to go with the lumpectomy I had already done and radiation therapy.  I could have chosen the mastectomy, but that is a pretty big surgery and, based on what we knew, wouldn't have given a better outcome in the long term.  The report of the DNA and cell receptors of the tumor was still pending, but it wouldn't affect the outcomes as far as surgery was concerned.
Just because I decided against the mastectomy didn't get me out of another trip to surgery.  I still had to have the lymph nodes checked for cancer cells.  These are the axillary nodes.  The idea is to start by removing the node closest to the tumor (the sentinel node) and keep removing them until the pathologist says they are clean.  Axillary is the anatomical term for armpit, so this time I expected a lot more discomfort than the first time.
When I got back to my room after surgery, Mike told me what the Dr. had said.  The nodes (only 2 of them were removed) had shown no signs of cancer.  Wow, maybe I wouldn't have to have chemotherapy!  We wouldn't know for sure until the detailed path was done, so I tried not to get my hopes up too high.  The size of the tumor is a good indicator of how likely it is to spread.  Mine, roughly the size of a hen's egg, was in the range that could easily have started to spread.
I didn't have to wait long.  I had the surgery on Tuesday and I got the call on Thursday.  The pathology was back and the nodes were, indeed, clear.  I really feel like I have dodged a bullet, well, more like a mortar round!  But there is still that little voice in the back of my mind that asks if the right nodes were checked.  No way to know...
That brings the story up to date.  I am doing well, but I was right about the second surgery hurting more than the first.  I actually used the pain pills they gave me this time and I didn't need them the first time.  And my stamina has been more affected than I expected, too.  I left the house for the first time today.  I needed a few things from the store.  It got to me a lot more than I would have expected.  I go back for follow up on Monday.  I will find out about the cell receptors then and will have a better idea what the treatment plan will be. I will get a referral to the oncologist then.