Limbo Land Train Is About to Leave the Station

Today was a hard but informative day. Luckily I brought with me one of my best friends who not only goes back a couple of decades but also has a freakishly good memory. Which those who know and love her sometimes hate that she can recall every word said. In this case, it was a gift for sure.

 Met my surgeon who is awesome in that she explained everything very thoroughly yet was still sensitive to my feelings. Plus, I knew I had the right one when I started to show her my breast while she was asking the various diagnostic questions, "Whoa, hold off on whipping that out, let me date you first."

I have a rarer type of cancer called "Invasive Lobular Carcinoma" that is "inflammatory" (only 1-2%  cancers) and likely "Stage 3B".  PET Scan tomorrow will rule out or let us know if it is the treatable, but incurable kind that is Stage 4.  I have so much detailed information that explains what all that means, my head is about to explode.

But in practically speaking, I have to hit the ground running in terms of treatment and it's going to be marathon (18 months, give or take). My oncologist appointment got moved up to tomorrow morning from Tuesday afternoon so if I had any doubt, that eliminated it.

First up in the plan is 4-6 months of chemotherapy before surgery. My kind of cancer grows so fast it's best we try to stop the growth and ideally shrink it prior to trying to remove it.  I will know more about when chemo portion tomorrow. But for now, I'm expecting that sometime between October and December, I'll have the mastectomy. Then a month later will be the start of 7 weeks of radiation therapy. 

Six months after that.. reconstruction surgery. And here's a little silver lining, they will reconstruct my breasts using fat from my belly! So if I can get through this, I not only get to live, I'm going to look fabulous! 

Confession though, I did need about two hours this afternoon to wallow in a pity party. But then I remembered "Operation Don't Freak Grandma Out" so the kids and I focused on doing some cleaning certain parts of the house that if left as is,  she'd just shake her head and wonder where she went wrong in raising me.