Hi Robyn, when I arrived in my surgeon's room, he opened the report and told me this was the first time he was seeing the report too, so was going through it as he read it. to me. He read me the conclusiions, ie margins clear, sentinel node neg for malignancy, Grade is grade 3. HER2 status uncertain so further ISH test to be done. So no radiotherapy, Chemo yes but exactly what sort will be decided by results of ISH test etc.He passed a copy to me, but it all looked like gobblydegook. And my head was foggy, I was a bit dopey from a raised temp from the infection, and was trying to make sense of the fact that the rurses had told me wrong about managing the infection/seroma by sending me home on Tuesday without giving antibiotic, and by telling me on Wednesday not to woryy but to wait till I saw the surgeon. I did not know whether to blame myself for not pushing harder to get the infection propertly treated (they just took out the drain and sent me home), or whether the nursing staff had mismanaged it. I was also taking in that it was a Grade 3 tumor was sobering and worrying.
I needed to deal with 4 items in the one appointment: the seroma and infection, the path report and treatment plan, the forms for my insurance company, and one other thing all at the same time. And I all the time I have this massive swollen seroma with 400mls needing draining and an infection in it. I needed to make sense of whether I should be moving more, either shoulder exercises, or general aerobic like walking, and whether it was damaging the other tissue to let it get too big, and what the relaitionship between the infection and the seroma was.
So it was only days later when I looked at the Path report in detail that I saw things like the 0.2mm clearance under the High nuclear grade DSIS (can that possibly be a sure and certain negative margin???) and that there was a 40mm x 40mm chunk removed from my armpit that was sent off as my sentinel node but turned out to be fat not node. So another chunk 12 x 2m which was a sentinel node (but does not say it was from my axilla) was removed, biopsied and found to be fine. Two shots to get one node? This could be a mistake in the marking of samples at theatre, or the reading of samples in the lab, I did also have a fatty cyst removed from my other collarbone which turned out to be 6Ox45x35,much bigger than expected. There could be any number of other possiblibities, It may have a perfectly logical explanation. But I kind of need answers..
I know my surgeon is very experienced. He, and oncologist Arlene Chan and fellow surgeon Diane run the Breast Cancer Research Certre of Australia, so are up to date with current research etc. He does a number of these operations each week,. He is also very nice and fairly easy to talk to usually. He is currently on holiday, and I don't see him again till the 6th Feb. I could ask my GP first: she is quite open and helpful, but also very upfront. So I think I will ring her on Tuesday and see if I can talk to her about these concerns first, and later with the surgeon himself. So thanks, this has helped a lot.
