Flashback: surgical consults

After my birthday and MRI, the next few weeks were filled with stressful surgical consultations.  March 16, I met with Teresa Harrington & Dr. Cocilovo at Georgetown.  I can't imagine more patient and compassionate medical professionals.  I learned, thankfully, that the MRI did not reveal anything in the other breast or give reason to believe that the lymph nodes were affected.  Basically, I learned all about the plan of attack -- surgery, which due to the small size of my tumor, could be a lumpectomy, followed by chemotherapy (because of my Her2-neu positive status, regardless of the earliness of the stage), radiation, and hormonal therapy.  I learned about staging, the importance of obtaining clear margins.  I learned that medically a lumpectomy + radiation is supposed to be equivalent to a mastectomy.   I learned about sentinel node biopsy, a relatively new procedure (in the last 10 years, I think), which can help avoid surgical removal of a larger number of lymph nodes if the initial nodes are negative.

I made an appointment for a second opinion with a very well regarded breast surgeon.  Suffice it to say that gathering all of my films correctly, getting to the right place at the right time and getting through this appointment managed to make a stressful few weeks even more stressful.  BUT -- I got what I came for.  Dr. #2 confirmed everything that Dr. C had said, and even pointed out to me how small my tumor was, and that the radiologist at Georgetown did a really good job of even picking it up at all.

Meanwhile, focused on trying to find things to relieve the anxiety... meditation, walking, hiking.  A few notable distractions were the Peeps diorama show at the Washington Post (I did become obsessed with peeps for a while there), an outing to hear local girl band, the Sweater Set, a concert at the Czech embassy, and Passover dinner at a friend's house to round out the month of March.