Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Pathology Report

Scott again.......wanted to share some good news. Dr S called this evening and informed Julie that they were able to remove 35 lymph nodes from the right side and only ONE was cancerous! The one that was biopsied during the surgery. Good thing they found that one. It actually didn't register on the device used to measure for tracers injected prior to surgery (to find sentinel nodes). Dr S just thought it felt unusual and slightly large so he removed it. We knew he was good and this is big-time evidence.
Her mass on the right that we knew was cancerous was sized at 3cm, which is smaller than the 5cm Dr S and Dr C thought it was from individual breast exams prior to surgery, so that is good too. They did find other areas in the right side that were cancerous and on the left side in all four quadrant of the breast. They were all very small and still within the ducts though. Again, confirming that we did the right thing in removing both breasts. The official stage of her disease is II-B. All things considered, this is good. Thank you, God.
Now back to the recovery..........

Monday, February 13, 2012

Home from the surgery

This is Scott, finally updating the blog. Sorry about the delay but it has been a challenging few days. Our Julie is a real trooper. The surgery was thursday and she was in the OR for 9.5 hours and in PACU for another 2.5 hours. Didn't make it to her room until 10:30 thursday night. The next three days were just trying to get a handle on the pain. She said that she never imagined the extent of the pain she would need to endure and at one time she wished she would of chosen to not do the reconstruction. She said some other things too that I know she would never want repeated.  It was difficult to see someone you love so much be in such relentless pain. I'm very glad that her friend Heidi was there with us through the whole thing. She is a physical therapist with some nursing background and she did way more for Julie than many of the nurses. It's amazing the varying level of service you get. You can really tell the people that are passionate about what they do and the one's that just go through the motions. Good to be home and happy to be through that portion of the journey and I know Julie feels the same.
The surgery went well but they did find cancer in a sentinel lymph node on her right side which required them to do an axillary lymph node dissection. The final pathology will not be known for a few more days and that will ultimately determine the stage of her disease and the treatment plan from here. The left side lymph nodes were fine though, so that is good. More importantly, the source of the disease is all out of her body so that is even better.
We are so thankful to all our family and friends for their prayers and help. We have had to lean on many of you through this initial, challenging phase and we can not thank you enough. We are truly blessed.  

Sunday, February 5, 2012

SuperBowl Sunday Yeah!!!

Hello Everyone,  I'm excited about the game today hope your all spending time with family and friends enjoying the day together.  I wanted to let you know I'm having surgery this Thursday 2-9-12 at T.G. going in at 6:30am surgery will start at 10am having what they call a bilateral double mastectomy with immediate reconstruction with breast expanders surgery should last between 7-10 hours so please pray some more for a steady hand for my Dr.S and for God to keep a watchful eye over me.  He has heard all your prayers and is always listening HE IS AMAZING... Thank you everyone for following me through this process I will post again soon  

Love Julie.....