I saw my surgeon and my nurse today for the official diagnosis & plan of attack. They gave me a huge binder full of reading material, big hugs and pep-talks. My nurse is a 12-year cancer survivor. My aunt is the nurse practitioner for my oncologist, whom I get to meet tomorrow.
I spent all weekend stressed and worried, and all day today distracted and on edge, mostly because my imagination loves to run wild speculating on the myriad ways I could die from this.
That aside, it is just nice to know *which* particular invader has taken up lodging in my breast, and especially great to have such an awesome team of doctors & nurses to take care of me right now.
So, the official diagnosis is a Triple Positive Breast Cancer, meaning my tumor is hormone fed (bye-bye birth control....) and very fast growing/aggressive. Luckily, we caught it pretty early, but we're pretty sure it's already spread to the lymph nodes in my right breast (where the tumor is.)
I see the oncologist tomorrow, probably will have a PET scan on Saturday. Then I get a port installed for chemotherapy next week, and start the chemotherapy anywhere from 1-3 days after getting the port installed.
Once I've had a few rounds of chemotherapy, and the tumor responds (fingers crossed,) I'll have a lumpectomy followed by radiation.
I'm overwhelmed and everything is happening so fast, so I'm sure I'm not emotionally processing anything right now.
At this point, my focus is to get through this week. I'll worry about the rest later.
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