That's the plan.

I had my appointment with my oncologist Dr. Dane Dickson in Idaho Falls.  He went over my history and how the lump was found.  He didn’t have the results for whether or not the cancer (I have a hard time calling it cancer instead of “it”) is triple negative so he called for the results.  You know, you would think you would want anything to do with cancer to be negative.  Not so.  The fact that is triple-negative breast cancer means that the cancer cells do not have receptors for the hormones estrogen, progesterone, or HER2.  10% to 20% of all breast cancers are triple-negative.  That eliminates the ability to use any form of hormone treatment. 

He could tell that I knew that was not good.  He stopped and looked at me and said, “I want you to know that you finding that lump is a miracle.  It is a miracle.”  He went on to say that he had seen tumors that were fast growing like mine that had grown to the size of an orange within 2 months and once it was that size it is usually spread to all of your lymph nodes.  That only 8 isolated tumor cells that had migrated to my lymph nodes was amazing, He attributed that to the fact that I found it and got it checked out so quickly.  He also said that I had made the right decision about the mastectomy considering how close it was to the chest wall and the size my chest was. 

I know Dr. Dickson could see I was pretty scared and I was pretty emotional throughout the appointment.  Everything is happening so fast and unfortunately everything hasn’t been the best case scenario.  He called the radiation doctor to talk about whether to remove the auxiliary nodes or whether to do radiation, that if it was his own wife, what route would he go.  Both the radiologist and Dr. Dickson said they would not remove the lymph nodes and do radiation.  Studies show not removing the auxiliary nodes with radiation vs radiation without removing the auxiliary nodes have the same rate of success, but if they did remove them they probably wouldn’t do radiation and call it good.  By doing radiation they could catch any other stray cancer cells that had escaped from this aggressive tumor anywhere in my body.  They could monitor the lymph nodes and any other areas by doing a CT scan to use as a base line comparison.  Also, removing the auxiliary nodes there can cause swelling and maybe nerve pain and it’s permanent.

He said he was taking off his doctor hat and was going to talk to me as Brother Dickson.  That he wanted me to know that he takes all of the medical and scientific knowledge out there but he also always tries to listen to the Spirit and let it guide him.  That he looks at all of the results on the medical reports as the Lord telling him what he needs to know so he can come up with the best treatment plan. He said we are going into a ravine and we can follow the road that seems clear or we can take a bunch of side roads to try to get to the end.  He could clearly see that chemo plus radiation would be the road to follow.  I agree.  I want to do all I can to try to eradicate this disease.

Luckily, even though I am triple negative, there are very effective treatments.  First, I will be having chemo with drugs referred to as TAC (taxotere, adriamycin, and cyclophosphamide) every 3 weeks, 6 times, for a total 18 weeks.  Then, after the chemo, I will have radiation treatments under my arm for my lymph nodes and from my collarbone area to mid chest on the right side because the tumor was only 2mm from my chest wall.  I will have the radiation treatments 5 times a week for 5 or 6 weeks.  That’s the plan.

Then he talked about a lot of medications to help with nausea, pain, side effects of chemo like losing my hair, neuropathy in the fingers, possible heart damage; people that walk, do yoga, basically low impact exercises, do better on chemo … I can’t remember most of it even though I was trying.  It’s a lot to take in.   

Ray had his first day at DoD/DHS consisting of a lot of “briefings” or orientations given with power point presentations.  He got moved into the room he found.  He’s renting from a gentleman in the ward he visited on Sunday.  His wife had gone to UT to take care of their daughter and her mother for 2 weeks; she’s been gone a year now.  I think it will work out well for both of them.  It’s close to the metro and they will both have company with similar likes and beliefs.  That’s one less thing to worry about.