Surgery looms

It's been three weeks since my last chemo session and tomorrow I'm off to surgery to remove the tissue from my tumour site and send it off to pathology.

Results will take a week. It's a section of tissue approximately 5cm x 4cm x 3cm and they'll need to cut it into thin slices and stain it to determine if there's any cancer left.

My oncologist tells me she's 'reasonably confident' of a full pathological response (which means no sign of cancer). Also, that even if there is some remaining cancer we've had a good result, with three tumours gone and the remaining tumour unstable at the last ultrasound over five weeks ago.

She tells me there's no point having another ultrasound (as much as I'd like one!) because any scan will be inconclusive. Not seeing anything doesn't mean there's no cancer cells and seeing something could be a 'ghost' of dead tissue with no active cancer, so I'll just have to wait until next week to see what happens next.

Either way I'll be having radiation therapy. I've looked at the statistics and the potential impact on my survival and I've decided to go ahead with it. I think the risks are worth it. When the doctor warned me there was a slight risk of heart trouble in 25 years I said, "If I have heart trouble in 25 years I promise to send you a thankyou card!" 

I'm doing my yoga every day, eating well and listening to meditation tapes.  I'm continuing to blog at http://positive3neg.wordpress.com and I'm finding that really helpful in terms of keeping my head in the game.

I'm most nervous about the trip to nuclear medicine tomorrow morning to have dye injected into my tumour site in my left breast. I'm looking forward to surgery. Time to get that tissue out of there! 

I'll post the results when I know them. x