Cancer log 125: Cancer…

Cancer log 125: Cancer all gone! Whee!

I do like it when your oncologist walks into the post-op appointment and opens with the words, "Good news!"

The biopsy results came back with the two tumor sites having shrunk further, to 6 mm and 2 mm respectively, with wide, clean margins on the surgery, and no cancer showing up in the lymph node, so I'm officially cancer-free. smile emoticon This is the result we mostly expected from the beginning, since it's breast cancer (which they've gotten very good at treating) and they caught it early, but you just never know; things do go wrong. I got lucky.

I get a few weeks to rest and keep healing from the surgery (right now, my main job is not to overdo it and tear the incision sites, setting us back on the schedule, but she says that so far, they're healing well). She did a beautiful job on the surgery overall -- the breast is still breast-shaped, and though about 10% of the volume is gone, it's just a little smaller than the other one, and looks totally fine in clothes. So fingers crossed, there shouldn't be any need for further reconstructive surgery. Dr. Claudia Perez @ Loyola, folks -- I recommend her work.

I do wish it were all over, but there's still some upcoming treatment to reduce the risk of it coming back; radiation starts in 2-3 weeks, and continues for six weeks thereafter in daily 30-minute doses; it comes with fatigue, but we don't know how much until I go through it. But if I have to spend some of Oct / Nov on a couch, it's manageable.

There'll also be Herceptin infusions for a year, starting around the same time. That's going in once every three weeks, for about 5 hours each time (including travel time), with a blood draw and then sitting in the chair being infused for a few hours, and then a few days of tiredness following. Tedious, but manageable.

In six months, I'll have another mammogram, and that repeats for two years; after that, if all goes well, I'm back to once yearly mammograms. So the mood is a combination of immediate rejoicing + cautious optimism for the future. I'll take it. :-)

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