dixie_belle
Well-Known Member
Today's visit at the cancer surgeon has lifted this large black cloud (and I've stopped crying, too). He said that a mastectomy was overkill and that he'll do a lumpectomy followed by a five day course of radiation. The actual procedure will be done thru a tube with a "basket" like device on the end. The basket sorta expands to about an inch around (20 cm actually) and removes that much tissue. He'll withdraw the basket and place a balloon like thing in the cavity. Then I go home until the pathology results come in. (about 3 days - give or take). If it shows the margins are clean, then I come back and he'll trade the balloon for a tube like thing. It'll extend out of my breast and that is what the radiation gets put in. I'll have two treatments a day, six hours apart. Then the tube come out, he rechecks everything and I'm done. There will be a bunch of followups, of course, but I get to keep my breast. What a relief. I will, however, not be able to come home for a week because we live so far from the hospital. There is a place just for people like me, called Hope House (or something like that) that was created especially for this sort of thing. We are like....oh.....2 hours from the hospital and so I can't really go back and forth twice a day. I didn't ask what any of this is going to cost, I probably don't want to know.
The doctor was wonderful. He gave me a business card - and wrote his cell phone number on it, just in case I had any questions or concerns. Can you believe that? The nurse-practitioner was the same - awesome.
They will call probably next week with a time table for all this. They have to coordinate the surgeon, the radiologist and the oncologist in addition to the Hope House place.
So even though I have cancer, I feel a whole lot better about all this than I did after visiting with the local surgeon.
The doctor was wonderful. He gave me a business card - and wrote his cell phone number on it, just in case I had any questions or concerns. Can you believe that? The nurse-practitioner was the same - awesome.
They will call probably next week with a time table for all this. They have to coordinate the surgeon, the radiologist and the oncologist in addition to the Hope House place.
So even though I have cancer, I feel a whole lot better about all this than I did after visiting with the local surgeon.
