I am starting this blog to keep everyone informed on my prognosis and recovery. Instead of answering the same question 10 times, everyone can come here to see how I'm doing and what surguries, exams, tests, are occuring. Of course, you can still always call, email, or text me too.
So to catch everyone up to speed, I was diagnosed with breast cancer on April 4, 2013. I found a lump in my right breast myself. I was undressing for the shower and noticed a dimple in my breast and knew that was not normal, so I immediately did a self breast exam. During that exam I felt a large, hard lump. Once in the shower, I did another exam and felt the same thing. I immediately grew concerned and called my gynocologist. Since I have fibrocystic breasts, she had ordered a mammo for me in May 2012 (in which she lied and said she had found a lump so that insurance who cover it). Sidenote: under the age of 35 insurance will not cover a screening mammo (looking for abnormalities), insurance will only cover a diagnostic mammo (abnormality detected/suspected). I never got around to getting this done so, I called the office to make sure that order had not expired, which it hadn't, so I scheduled the mammo for March 28th. I went in for the exam and they decided to also do a breast ultrasound. I found out later, that the mammogram did not show anything, but they could see the mass on the ultrasound. So they ordered an ultrasound guided breast core biopsy to take samples of the mass and do pathology on it. I went in for that, scared to death because I'd been told how painful they were......and boy was that true!!! The worst pain of my life! I'd rather break my arm again than go through that pain again. Well, 7 days later at 8:30am my gynocologist woke me up with a phone call telling me the results...."It's breast cancer." My world fell apart. Only some of you may know that just in January I was diagnosed with melanoma. So getting a second cancer diagnosis in 3 months was a hard pill to swallow.
Last week I met with my breast surgeon and spent 2.5 hours in a consultation with him, getting more information than my parents and I could handle. Luckily, part of the Community Hospital breast center care is to provide you with a "navigator" who is a corridinator between you and all your doctors. She is there is to schedule all your appts, answer any questions, go to major appts with you, and keep all the lines open between everyone involved in your care. My navigator's name is Sharlee and she is wonderful. She was acutally an oncology nurse for many years, so she understands what I'm going through and is very informed about cancer issues.
The main question I keep getting from people is "what is your plan?" Right now I am in the process of getting tons of tests and exams. The BRCA test has not come back yet (tests for the breast cancer gene). My HER2 and HER2 by Fish were both equivoqal (sp), so they are sending for a more sensitive test called aqua to hopefully get a definite positive or negative answer. I go on April 17th for outpatient surgery to get a port placed and a sentinal node biopsy. Then April 18th is my breast MRI. They want to do chemo before surgery, so I start chemo on April 23rd. I am being told that I will lose my hair 2 weeks to the day after chemo starts, and my insurance does not cover getting a wig.....so get ready for this white bald head coming your way!
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