Today was D Day

As for the rest of my results- I have been upgraded to stage 3 locally advanced, but no distant metastasis at this point. So far there are at least 5 lymph nodes involved and most of those are relatively large. They are concerned it is moving into lymph nodes in my neck as my collarbone area has become tender but is still nothing compared to my armpit. 

The surgeon wants to do breast conserving surgery but I’m not sure why if there is a risk of recurrence. I made it clear I wanted an aggressive approach to limit the chances of it coming back. Then we discussed the options and it looks like I will have the whole lot- chemo first followed by surgery and axillary clearance, then radiation in the armpit, maybe chest and neck. Then the hormone blockers. 

I’ve asked for a port to be inserted for chemo so I go back to the surgeon next week to sign consent forms and hopefully get that sorted, then the cancer centre at my local hospital will call to organise all the chemo etc with my oncologist who I haven’t met yet. I do know that the Red devil will be  my starting point so I’m going to research that a bit.

I’m feeling relatively positive about it all as my main concern was it moving to stage 4 but stage 3 made more sense based on what I already knew about the lymphatic system. Chemo will hopefully shrink my lymph nodes down as I’m finding sleep without medical assistance (painkillers/melatonin) hard, and even having my arm against my side is painful.