Round Two, Surgery Two

Back in for surgery today. I am starving, I think that is the worst part about late afternoon surgeries, nothing after midnight, ugh, I have the shakes, headache, and I am miserable cause I want food!

Anyways, trying to distract from that and thought I would blog about what will be happening to me in a few hours. We have three things going on today: re-excising the previous incision to get more breast tissue, possibly, cancer cells, and a cleaner margin; dissecting a handful of axillary lymph nodes for evaluation of cancer cells; installing my chemo port. So what does all that mean?

1. Wider excision of last lumpectomy: When the last Doc went in three weeks ago, he thought he was going in for a 1.7 cm tumor, he found more,  in that there was alot of breast tissue left from three years ago and he decided he needed to take it. Upon further pathological evaluation, it was determined that there was DCIS (non invasive cancer from first time) cells in there and the tumor he took was invasive. He got as much as he could at the time, but again, under pathological evaluation it appears the margins are too close to the edge. The diagram shows positive vs. negative margins. So now that we know what we are dealing with, the new Doc knows what she is going in and getting.  

2. Axillary Node Dissection - Normally you would go in and do a sentinel lymph node dissection, but they got that Round one, so today the Doc is going in and getting what she called "a handful" of lymph nodes to evaluate. The theory is if there are no cancer cells in the lymph nodes she takes, then the cancer is isolated to that area and has not spread to the rest of the body. Here is a picture of a woman's axillary lymph nodes.

In the old days they use to go in and take them all, but that can cause lots of problems as these little nodes help our body drain properly. With her hopefully, just having to take a few it shouldn't be as big an issues afterwards for me, but I will still go see a physical therapist who will teach me exercise that I can do to prevent future problems with my lymph system.

3. inserting the chemo port. As I will be receiving the chemotherapy through an IV and I will be doing this for 16 weeks, they put in a temporary port, under the skin, that goes right into my veins, so when I go in for my chemo, they just insert the needle into the port.

It's time to go, will let you know how it all went tomorrow, after I eat a cheeseburger and fries and a milkshake!