Rough start.

The last few days I have been in a bit of a slump. I have been feeling a little sorry for myself and kinda sad. I don't look forward to the night because the kids are in bed, it's quiet and there aren't anymore distractions. That also makes it hard to sleep, my mind races, wanders and is a complete mess.

Yesterday I went to the clinic for some blood work and a chest x-ray, when I got out of the SUV I could hear the birds and it made my heart warm. It made me think about how delicate this life really is... it made me thankful that I got to hear the birds, look at my children, laugh with my Mom, talk to my sister and have my man hold me like he would never let me go.

On a lighter note, I thought I would post an half boobie pic of my "de bop, de, de bios, de bubopsy". (Love my Big Fat Greek Wedding) It doesn't look too bad, but it hurt a lot more than I had expected. The bigger of the two bruises is the actual cancerous spot. The small one, is by my armpit, and that is the lymph node they checked.

Fun Fact - How many people have seen my boob(s): As of today 5

I am sure that number is going to get pretty high... any guesses???

There may be a prize if you get close, like guessing the number of jelly beans in a bottle at a baby shower. I will keep that in mind. ;)

So today I was also pretty miserable. The doctors office finally called and set me up with an appointment with the surgeon. I saw him at 3:30pm. We talked about a lot of things like lumpectomies, mastectomies, the survival rate of having either, which one would be higher. Turns out they have the same survival rate. If the cancer comes back after having had a lumpectomy, then they can do a mastectomy. If the cancer comes back after having had a mastectomy, which is possible however lower than the lumpectomy, then it isn't usually good news. It usually means that it is a secondary site and the cancer is somewhere else like your lungs, bones etc. At which point they can't do much.

So Ken and I are thinking that we will take the risk of it coming back at this point by doing the lumpectomy. That sounds like we are being kind of foolish maybe, but I don't think either one is a bad decision. If I did do a mastectomy I wouldn't have to do radiation, but I am not sure I can make that decision yet. If my breast is pretty gnarly looking after the lumpectomy and after I have done radiation and chemo, then we will think about reconstruction. But for now, I am pretty sure we have made our decision.

So in the next week and a bit, I will have a double mammogram, and an MRI. The MRI will be able to tell us what the actual size of the lump is and tell us if there are more lumps that were undetectable by the ultrasound or the mammo. Then I will have surgery next Friday. After surgery they will be able to let us know what kind of cancer it is, what stage we are in and such. The doctor said is was called an Infiltrating Carcinoma. And it is poorly differentiated, meaning that the cells no longer look like breast tissue cells, the are completely unrecognizable (for those of us who had no idea of what that was).

It will take a few weeks to fully recover from the surgery, which is just a day surgery (no biggy I am assuming lol) and then 4-8 weeks after that I will start radiation. That will be anywhere from 4-6 weeks, 5 days a week with the weekends off. I don't know if I have all of my info correct, but I think I am giving you guys the gist of it. After radiation I will start Chemo. But the process of everything is up to the Oncologist, so things still aren't set in stone. And if you know me, you know I am a planner, and am quite organized, so this "unknown" is hard for me.

Anyways, enough rambling on and on. I just wanted to keep you up to date about what was happening. Again I thank you all for all your thoughts and prayers. We feel really blessed. I will leave a post again soon! Love to you all.