Pathology Results

After surgery last week I got my pathology results yesterday.

Short version; it's not as great as I had hoped but it's still good news.

Long version; The tissue sample they removed from my breast still had some islands of active cancer amongst the dead tissue but the margins are clear (meaning they're pretty sure they've got it all). One of my removed lymph nodes had evidence of dead cancer cells and the other four were clear.

Thanks to the decision to have chemotherapy first I've avoided a mastectomy, avoided 'full clearance' of my lymph nodes from under my arm and avoided all of the complications that can come with that treatment.

I was hoping for a full pathological response because that would have dramatically improved my survival chances, based on the statistics.

On the other hand, having islands of cancer has reminded me to be vigilant about my health. I still have three chances in four of beating this and that's just the baseline. I plan on doing what I can to improve those odds.

Next stage of treatment will be six weeks of daily radiation. They're now going to include the lymph nodes down the centre of my chest because of the evidence of dead cancer in one of the nodes that was removed. There was another 'hot' node in my chest but it was under the rib cage so my surgeon decided to leave it there. She's confident that if there was cancer in it, the chemotherapy has caught it and the radiation will mop up any damaged cells. No need to go breaking my ribs to get it out.
And I always remember that statistics are just a starting point, and they relate to what happened five years ago. Things are improving all the time.

I was really hoping for a full pathological response and I'm feeling a bit sad that i didn't get it. I'm also remembering that if breastscreen hadn't found this cancer last July I'd probably be dead by now.