As a football fan I've heard all my life that it is a game of inches. An inch gained here, an inch lost there can be the difference between wining and losing. Cancer must be a game of millimeters then and we're hoping this week we got information that will find us on the winning side of the line.
Since the surgery last week we have been waiting for the pathology to get back and on Wednesday we finally found out some more about the tumor that was removed and the tissue surrounding it. The big news that we've been waiting on has been whether or not the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes. According to the pathology report there were no cancer cells present in the lymph nodes. We were also anxious to find out about the margins, the distance between the cancer cells and the edge of the tissue sample, and found out that the closest margin was 1 mm between the breast tissue and where it was taken off the muscle wall. The overall tumor was 3.5 x 3.0 x 2.5 cm.
On Thursday we went to a chemo class at the oncology clinic, which was very informative, and as luck would have it we ran into our oncologist in the hallway. He told us if we could wait for a second he would go over the pathology reports with us and answer a few of our questions. He also had the reports back on the full-body bone scans that Andrea had done earlier in the week. With the pathology and the bone scans he is pretty confident that if there was any spread of the cancer cells outside of the breast it is limited. We removed all that we could with the surgery and finding nothing in the lymph nodes is a great sign. So to summarize, the tumor was large and close to the muscle wall. The cancer was triple negative and aggressive. We hope the chemo will take care of anything that the scalpel didn't.
Between now and July 8, Andrea has a few things to do before starting chemo. First and foremost she needs to heal from the surgery. She is doing fantastic, but we might have to remind her to take it easy and not overdo things from time to time. Then there are several more tests scheduled. She will also be getting a port installed on Tuesday. They showed us one during the chemo class and to me it looks like the air valve on a basketball. Basically chemo will ruin the small veins where IVs are usually placed in your arms, so they put a port-a-cath in, which attaches to larger veins nearer the heart. The port is just under the skin and can be used for all of her chemo treatments, blood draws, and anything else she needs.
Since the surgery last week we have been waiting for the pathology to get back and on Wednesday we finally found out some more about the tumor that was removed and the tissue surrounding it. The big news that we've been waiting on has been whether or not the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes. According to the pathology report there were no cancer cells present in the lymph nodes. We were also anxious to find out about the margins, the distance between the cancer cells and the edge of the tissue sample, and found out that the closest margin was 1 mm between the breast tissue and where it was taken off the muscle wall. The overall tumor was 3.5 x 3.0 x 2.5 cm.
On Thursday we went to a chemo class at the oncology clinic, which was very informative, and as luck would have it we ran into our oncologist in the hallway. He told us if we could wait for a second he would go over the pathology reports with us and answer a few of our questions. He also had the reports back on the full-body bone scans that Andrea had done earlier in the week. With the pathology and the bone scans he is pretty confident that if there was any spread of the cancer cells outside of the breast it is limited. We removed all that we could with the surgery and finding nothing in the lymph nodes is a great sign. So to summarize, the tumor was large and close to the muscle wall. The cancer was triple negative and aggressive. We hope the chemo will take care of anything that the scalpel didn't.
Between now and July 8, Andrea has a few things to do before starting chemo. First and foremost she needs to heal from the surgery. She is doing fantastic, but we might have to remind her to take it easy and not overdo things from time to time. Then there are several more tests scheduled. She will also be getting a port installed on Tuesday. They showed us one during the chemo class and to me it looks like the air valve on a basketball. Basically chemo will ruin the small veins where IVs are usually placed in your arms, so they put a port-a-cath in, which attaches to larger veins nearer the heart. The port is just under the skin and can be used for all of her chemo treatments, blood draws, and anything else she needs.