Monday 14 October 2013

Day 35 (Tuesday 15 October): Going home with good news

I'm enjoying my last "breakfast in bed" and looking forward to "breaking out" in an hour or so. After a good day yesterday of visits and information from the Breastcare nurse and a pretty good sleep I'm ready to rejoin the world.

Dr. Andrew came in a half hour ago and shared my top-level pathology: all 15cm of my left breast contained DCIS (pre-cancerous) as well as multiple Grade 3 (aggressive and rapidly dividing)  invasive cancerous tumours, the largest of which was 2cm. Cancerous cells were found in 2 (only 2!) lymph nodes. Apparently it would not have been surprising to have seen it in 10 lymph modes. Finally, the receptors are hormone-positive but not HER2 positive.

So what does that all mean and why is it good news to me? First off, I'm very relieved to hear that it's only in a few lymph nodes as secondary (metastisized) cancer terrifies me. My dad lost his battle to secondary cancer. Secondly, the fact that it's not HER2 positive means that there are more treatment options and it won't have to go on so long. Finally, as either Stage 2 or Stage 3, the survival rates are very high.

What it means is that I'll have chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone therapy. I'm ok with that as I've spent the last week getting my head around it. I figure that if it takes chemo to eradicate the Grade 3 cells, then bring it on. I want this disease to go the f*^k away!

I'll see Dr. Andrew on Friday to go into more depth then have an appointment with my medical oncologist, likely to be Dr. Fran.

Now it's time to get my last drain out, shower, pack, pay my bill, head out and go look at a used convertible for my upcoming commute. Onward and upward!

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