Winning the lottery, metaphorically speaking
I met with my oncologist yesterday for the first time since my mastectomy Aug.9. I am just beginning to feel better. I am having problems with tightness in my shoulder and arm and have been cranky because I have had a lowgrade fever that comes and goes and really bad chills. I do feel better today and hopefully tomorrow I will get my staples out and maybe the drains. To get to my point. The pathology report showed nothing in either the breast or any of the lymph nodes. My oncologist is wonderful and though English is not his first language he is very creative in getting his point across. Don't get me wrong, his English is very good. He just approaches things differently. He sat and looked at the results for a moment or two after I made a silly joke about losing a perfectly good breast, he is very serious and I tend not to be. Then he told me that in a percentage of women, that have the neoadjuvant treatment, the cancer seems to melt away. In his words, I may have won the lottery. We will still have to watch my liver,etc. While mine wasn't really meant to be neoadjuvant, it seems to have worked that way. In addition, all the scans they have done recently have been negative. So I am beginning to feel very lucky and very blessed.
Leslie
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In the world of destiny, there are no statistics.
Jan. 26- mammogram and ultrasound- suspicious lump
Mid-February- lumpectomy, infiltrating ductal carcinoma ~4.5 cm and a 1 cm DCIS, did not get clear margins, did not check lymph nodes
ER+/PR+, her2 +++, nuclear grade 3 of 3
February 20-PET scan showed something on liver. No biopsy.
March- Started carboplatin, herceptin, taxol on a four week cycle
May 3- Pet scan, with intent to do a biopsy, found nothing, liver or breast- no biopsy because there is nothing to biopsy
June 21- new onc, very concerned that there had been no biopsy,
June 18th-CAT scan, bone scan-negative
August 7th - Brain MRI-negative
August 9th- mastectomy, all pathology negative
January 2008 still NED! New oncologist -herceptin for full year after chemo- until July, and tamoxifen---negative scans since May '07
July 2008-Finished Herceptin!
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