I was unable to take someone with me to my post-op because my son got sick and we don’t leave him with people when he is sick. Its ok, I wasn’t expecting any unexpected news.
Enter the Universe.
I disrobed “from the waist up, cover opening in the front” so the surgeon could check on my incision healing. She inquired briefly how I was and checked briefly my incision. Everything was healing nicely.
She sat down and faced me and said: “So I have some good news and some not so good news. The good news is that you have no invasive cancer. The not so good news is that the questionable cells that I had decided not to have biopsied was entirely DCIS. So the margins on three sides were not clear. Clear means that the margin of unaltered cells is more than 2-3 centimeters. Mine were 1 or less.
I think I repeated, “this sucks” at least fourteen time while the surgeon was giving me all the details. She would have to do a mastectomy because there is not enough tissue left to save the breast. I asked repeatedly if she was sure (of course she was sure, she’s a professional and a damn good surgeon), because, it sure looks like there’s a lot of boob left. She said that essentially what I have on my chest is a water balloon. What appears to be breast its actually fluid.
Upshot: no radiation. No invasive cancer.
Downshot: mastectomy and then reconstruction (which in this case, is a longer recovery time)
So once again. I wait for a new plan. This was NOT how this was supposed to go.
None of this was.
On the way home, I screamed. I cried. I screamed again. I yelled at the universe that this was not where i was supposed to be. I thanked the universe that I was not going to die. I apologized to everyone out loud that I was wrecking their scheduled lives.
Next steps: meet with a tissue reconstruction surgeon. Apparently, there are two great ones in our area, and I had a referral to one of them by the time I left the office. Once we meet with her, then we decide a plan. I can wait a bit, there’s no rush. The DCIS is gone. So I need more information. Of course it hasn’t stopped me from thinking about all the options (over and over and over again) even though its only been hours since hearing this new bit of information.
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