meredith's garden

i am a 31 year old mother of two with an amazing husband. i have no pertinent family history. what i *do* have is breast cancer. and we don't know why. let me back up...

i woke up one morning in the beginning february, and my left breast felt like it was asleep. so, much like you would an arm or a leg, i rubbed it to wake it up. that's when i felt the lump for the first time. i am not someone who ever did regular exams, so i had no idea if it was a new lump or not. i had my husband feel it, and he said that he was sure that it was nothing. i'm a hypochondriac, so i got a bit nervous. i called my doctor and she said that since i didn't do regular exams, i should wait a week to see if it went away. it didn't. so i went in to see her and she gave me a physical exam and said "yep, that's a lump". what else could she say, right? so she gave me the number for the breast clinic in our area.

when i called the breast clinic to set up my appointment i was a little freaked out, but assumed that this was all much ado about nothing. as i said, i had no family history and i'm only 31. it took about 2 weeks to get in, but i had my mammogram on thursday, feb 26th. they "always set up an appointment for an ultrasound right after a mammogram in case you need it", so that's where i went after the mammo. when she was doing the mammo the tech was very talkative. she said she was sure it was a benign cyst- and that she sees them all the time in ladies like me. the ultrasound tech was very talkative, too, until she saw the lump. then things got a bit quiet. and a nurse from the "clinic side" came in "just in case i would need to go over there". and the tech showed her the lump on the ultrasound. they cleaned me up and went to show the films to a doctor. she came back in with them and they re-did the ultrasound. for the 3rd time. then the doctor told me she wanted a biopsy.

walking back to the lockers to get my clothes so that i could go to the clinic, i said to the tech "now i should be worried, right? this is bad?" and she said "80% of what we biopsy is benign." okay. fabulous. they let my hubby come in for the biopsy, which made things a whole lot better and less scary. the nurse talked to us all about my lump, and took another family history. still nothing "pertinent". here's the "unpertinent" part that i've always told my doctors since i was 18. my maternal grandmother had breast cancer in 1980, and again in 1995. both times she had mastectomies with no need for chemo or radiation. in 2004 it was found in her bones. we were always told that it was the "non-genetic" kind, and that i didn't need a baseline mammo till i was 40. the nurse at the clinic agreed with all of this. so she did the biopsy and took 8 samples. not fun, but not terrible.

i asked her to please call me asap. as you may recall, this is all taking place on a thursday, and i really didn't want to wait over the weekend. i told her that i was hard to reach at school, but that she could call my husband and give him results. she said there was probably very little chance of us hearing anything before monday, but that she'd do her best.

she called on friday, february 27th, and told kenny that i had breast cancer. since then, my grandmother has died of the disease (2 days after my diagnosis) and my world has officially been rocked. after the diagnosis there was a flurry of tests and appointments. i've had an mri, a ct, and a bone scan. i've had an ultrasound biopsy. i've met with a surgeon, an oncologist, and a psychologist.

my official diagnosis is triple negative invasive ductile carcinoma. it is an aggressive cancer. they believe that i am stage 2- there is no clinical evidence of any involvement in my lymph nodes, or anywhere else. they won't know for sure about the stage i'm in until my surgery. my tumor is 2.5 centimeters, which is fairly large in the breast tumor world. because i am triple negative, they don't know what really caused my cancer to form. it also means that there isn't anything they can give me after the fact to help ensure that the cancer doesn't form again.

here's our plan- and i think it's a good one :) we're doing chemo now- 4 rounds of 3 drugs (5FU, cytoxen, and andromycin). so i go every 3rd wednesday, and then again every 3rd saturday. on the saturday i only get one drug (the cytoxen, again). they will monitor my tumor to make sure the chemo is working- the hope is that it will shrink. my last chemo for this round is scheduled for may 20th barring any infections. in june or july i'll have my surgery (not sure what kind, yet). then i will have 12 more weeks of chemo and possibly radiation. the 12 weeks of chemo will be one drug once a week. that one isn't supposed to make me as sick- i think it's taxol, but don't quote me.

so that's it in a nutshell... i don't really have a prognosis- the last they told me was 85% of women like me are still alive in 10 years. that's pretty good odds, i think :) i keep asking them for more specifics, but i don't think they like to share that information. or maybe that's as close as they can get to an exact number. or maybe i don't want to know anyway...