Good visit with the surgeon

After not seeing her for a while, I just met with my breast surgeon to talk about next steps. I originally scheduled the meeting when I thought I would be finished with chemo on March 19. The doctor thought the chemo did a good job and there was shrinkage - it is always heartwarming when surgeons express how much they love chemo. She thinks we are on target for me to have a lumpectomy. The next step is for me to have an mri after Chemo is over - and that is scheduled for April 6. Depending on what the MRI shows, I'm scheduled to have surgery on May 1. The assumption is that if the MRI shows something I would have an MRI or ultrasound guided wire put in for the surgery to remove what is found on the scan. If my scan is clear - the doctor will remove the area around my biopsy - my sentinel lymph nodes and we will check that the borders are clear.

There is a chance that the MRI would show that there is more cancer but both the oncologist and surgeon think the lumpectomy is probably the most likely option for surgery. :) Then if my margins are clear that will be the end. If the margins aren't clear it might mean new surgery but it was positive to hear that everyone believes that the chemo seems to have done its job and has shrunk the tumor. I'm trying hard not to give all the credit to the AC - though I gotta love the red poison and not discount the yew tree derivatives (taxol and taxotere).


So I'm hanging in there - the next steps are to do the next two chemo treatments, hopefully the taxotere will be nicer to me than plain old tazol, have an MRI and then ideally surgery at the beginning of May. Things can change but that seems what my current plan is.

I'm hoping that after coming down from the steroids from this past treatment tomorrow - I will have a couple of good weeks to focus on something besides chemo and cancer and maybe join the rest of the world in wondering how much money AIG and Citibank could have possibly lost over the last months.