Genetics and a bump in the road

Hi Everyone,

The sun has come out, so everyone seems to be happy around here!  I have been able to do some interpreting, and generally keep up with life the last week or so.  That feels really good. 

We met with the Genetic counselor on Tuesday.  We opted to get the genetic test even though it costs an arm, leg, and another leg!  This will tell if I carry the mutation that --in the words of my surgeon-" lets us know that your breasts are cancer making machines".  The repercussions of this are that we would need to scrap the radiation plan, and do a double mastectomy and remove ovaries/tubes, etc.  That seems like a whole lot of surgery that I would rather avoid, so fingers are crossed that this comes back negative. 

Everything has gone as smoothly as we could hope for to this point, but everyone has warned us about bumps in the road.  I think we hit one.  When I met with the medical oncologist he prescribed Tamoxifen--standard procedure for pre-menopausal women with breast cancer.  This medicine can be hard on the liver so he begins every treatment with a baseline liver function test.  I am pretty familiar with this process because I had several of them last year when taking a different medication.  Friday after arriving home from all of the appointments and getting the prescription dropped off at the pharmacy, I received a call from his nurse telling me to wait to take the tamoxifen until I meet with my GP because of elevated liver counts.  I saw her today.  One of the numbers was slightly low, two were slightly high, and another was 100X the normal amount.  There are an assortment of reasons this could be happening--many of them very unlikely given my current lifestyle/lack of symptoms.  We repeated the test today to see if there are similar numbers, I also go for an abdominal ultrasound tomorrow.  Life wasn't interesting enough, we have to add another wrinkle!

I often say that I don't mind life being "boring" because that means there aren't any major problems...it looks like it will be a WHILE until life is boring for us again, sigh.

Tondalea

Oncology Day

Sigh of Relief!  Today was the big oncology appointments.  First with the Medical Oncologist.  He had good news to share.  The oncotype score test came back "low" for need to have chemotherapy.  The plan is drug therapy and radiation.  We still have one more hurdle to overcome.  The breast cancer gene test.  We meet with the Gene Therapist on Tuesday.  That test will probably take three weeks to get the results.  Radiation is scheduled to begin June 8th. Every day for 6-7 weeks.   We are delaying until we know about the BC gene results.  If they are positive for the mutation, we go back to surgical solutions.  So here's to hoping the good luck continues!

Pathology report-post op visit

We just returned from the post-surgical appointment.  Good news!  The tumor is stage one. The lymph nodes were still clear after additional analysis.  All of the margins are clear (which means they can be confident they got all of the tumor cells).  The doctor said "this is good news, like go-out-to-dinner-and-celebrate kind of good news". 

There are still a couple of question marks--the genetic testing on the tumor and the genetic testing for me.  Those will take a little bit of time.  Either of these could change the course of treatment, but as it stands right now, we have radiation and hormone suppression drugs ahead of us.

So, I am trying to get back to "myself" a bit, but very aware (especially with Glenn reminding me) that I am still recovering and shouldn't get too ambitious.

Thanks everyone for your support and help throughout this--especially last week!

Tondalea