Recovery and more Info

May 28, 2009, six days after her surgery, Laura is starting to feel a lot better. She has done a little house work, a lot of Sudoku puzzles and has even gone for a few short walks. She does tire easily still and is pretty sore. She is also tired of carrying around the fluid drains hanging on her side. But, she is doing very well.

Laura got a phone call yesterday morning from Vicki Rosser, the Health Care Nurse assigned to Laura at HCI. She had some information about the biopsies on the tumor and the lymph nodes. Samples of the tumor had been frozen, sliced up and examined. The tumor cells were “moderately differentiated slightly towards the high end”. As far as we can tell, this refers to the appearance of the cancer cells’ nuclei compared to that of normal breast tissue cells. We understood it to mean the cells were a little more differentiated then most cancer cells.

The biopsy on the sentinel lymph nodes revealed that there were two small clumps of cancer cells there. But, they were small enough (less than 2 mm) that there is apparently no worry that they could have metastasized to anywhere else. They didn’t seem worried about this at all.

Another bit of news is that the tumor measured 4.7 centimeters. This is quite a bit larger than the mammogram and ultra sounds had led the doctors to believe. Laura’s case will be presented to the HCI Tumor Board that meets every Tuesday. There they will decide on the best way to proceed. Vicki’s opinion is that due to the size of the tumor, there is now a 90 percent chance that the board will recommend radiation. It is not clear yet whether that means radiation following the chemo, or radiation instead of chemo. We will know more on Thursday when Laura meets with Dr. Saundra Buys, the medical oncologist. Laura has an appointment with Dr. Neumayer the same day for follow up on the surgery. One of the two tube drains will be removed at this time. She also has a tentative appointment with a radiation oncologist for the end of June. This appointment will be cancelled if the Board doesn’t recommend radiation.