Treatment update

Finally met with doctors yesterday and now have a plan...

The appointment with the doctors yesterday went about how I expected. I'm going to include some medical stuff here in case you want to do some research and find out what all this crap means. I would recommend Breastcancer.org as a place to start. They have a ton of information that's easy to read and understand.

I have Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, grade 2 tumor between 1-1.9 cm with a second tumor at 4 mm in my left breast. There is a lymph node under my left arm that's about 4 cm and probably cancerous. They did a biopsy on it yesterday just to confirm this. However, IDC is the most curable and easily treatable cancer. The doctors kept referring to it as "garden variety" breast cancer. The IDC is estrogen-receptor positive and progesterone-receptor positive, which means these hormones can help the cancer to grow. It is HER2 negative, which is another deals with genetics and if it's negative, it doesn't influence the growth of cancer cells. With that information, it appears that I am Stage IIA, which means there are tumors under 2 cm and lymph node involvement.

Treatment options that were discussed were what I expected. Option of lumpectomy or mastectomy. I'm going to opt for lumpectomy because I have no history of cancer in my family so shouldn't need a mastectomy. Approximately one month after surgery, I will undergo chemotherapy for 4-6 cycles, which will go over a couple of months. Cycles appear to be 2-3 weeks in length. Following that, probably 6 weeks of radiation, 5 days a week. This is fromBreastcancer.org:

"Chemotherapy usually is given in cycles -- a specific period of treatment followed by a period of recovery. For instance, you may get chemotherapy on the first day of the cycle and then have a few weeks of recovery with no treatment. That is one cycle. Or you may get chemotherapy for several days in a row, or every other day, and then have a recovery period. A complete chemotherapy treatment is made up of several cycles. The number of cycles in a regimen and the total time of each regimen varies depending on the medicines used, but most regimens take 3 to 6 months to complete."

Because the cancer is hormone receptive, I will also be taking Tamoxifen, which helps keep the growth of the cancer from being attached to and growing from hormones.

Whew. That's a lot of info. Let's get to some lighter stuff.

The two doctors - Dr. Catherine Dang and Dr. Jennifer Lin - were awesome, as was everyone I saw yesterday. And they seemed to take good care of the Filmmaker while he was patiently waiting in between examinations and information. They looked like high school girls playing at being a doctor and The Filmmaker has dubbed them the "Hello Kitty" doctors. But they were precise and comforting, not giving too much information and being clear about what decisions needed to be made immediately and what decisions could wait. They assured me that even if it takes a few weeks to schedule the surgery that the cancer is not fast-growing and a week or two won't make a big difference. Dr. Dang is the presiding doctor and I think Dr. Lin may be in training but she certainly didn't feel like she was an intern or anything.

So the next step is a full body CT scan to ensure that there isn't cancer in any other part of my body, which they didn't seem to be too worried about. Then I meet with the doctors again and we will probably set the surgery date. The chemo treatment, etc., will probably be decided after the surgery, once they get all the lymph nodes out and biopsy everything again. Much biopsying will be done.

And The Filmmaker took exceptional care of me yesterday. My favorite part was the trip to the Edison for a happy hour dinner with champagne and grilled cheese and tomato soup. What a beautiful place. I want to live there, please. 

In other news (sorry this is so very long), my colleague, Allegra Newman, has almost finished putting together the Give Forward page and it will be going live soon. This is a fundraising site that she's hoping to use to help raise some money for me so I can pay my bills while going through treatment. I will post the link once it's live.

So stay tuned. We're just beginning...