Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Well, the results are back!

(Drum roll please......)

I still have cancer.

And....wait for it.....it's worse than we thought! TA DA!!

I really should just stop having tests done.

Ok, so it's not quite as dramatic as that. It could be a lot worse. But I have been upgraded from Stage II to Stage III. Why is that, you ask? Well, for the answer we go to the results of our friend, the MRI.

I got the MRI to confirm  the state of the second lesion that was found by the folks at the Breast Diagnostic Center. (This second lesion, by the way, was totally missed by the folks at the Estes Park Medical Center. Note to self.) However, the MRI confirmed that there actually is no second lesion. It's just one big-ass lesion that you can't see in its entirely on an ultrasound. So.....the lesion is now bigger than 5 cm all together which puts in into the Stage III zone. Yay!

The PET scan turned up a few little goodies, too: a "questionable" spot in my right breast (to be biopsied at a date to be determined soon) and a possible spot in one of the lymph nodes under my breast bone (which should be taken care of by the chemo).

So what does all this mean? Nothing new, really. It just confirms what I was already thinking was going to have to happen.

The PET scan indicated that the lesions are fairly metabolically active, so they should respond to the chemo. There is a chance that the chemo will shrink the main lesion, but probably not enough to have a lumpectomy since the damn thing is now too big to be a space station. The lesion is in two different quadrants of the breast, so that's the magic pathway to a mastectomy. Because there is a possible spot in the right breast, we'll have to wait for the biopsy to see if I'm the grand prize winner of a double mastectomy. Winner winner, chicken dinner.

Just a few more mighty things for me to wrap my head around. They've been coming at me pretty steadily lately. Stage III drops the 5 year relative survival rate from 93% to 72%. Up to this point, I've pretty much been ignoring the survival rate. 72% is still pretty good, but does get me thinking about life just a little bit more. The sunrise this morning, by the way, was fantastic.

All  of this also makes the idea of double mastectomy and double reconstruction all that much more real. I'm not afraid of surgery, but this will be a big surgery. I guess a lot of women with breast cancer opt for the double M just for the symmetry of reconstruction. I'll have to think more about that.

So this week is turning out to be a very full week. I have a echocardiogram on Monday. This is meant to get a baseline read on my heart health since there is a very small chance that the chemo can cause heart problems. Monday, though, is also my hair cut day. I'm headed to the hair salon to get my hair chopped shorter to as to prepare for the Great Fall Out. There will probably be some hair dye administered, too. Just sayin....

Tuesday will probably end up being port day. They'll need to put a port in for easy administering of the chemo. I don't think this is a very big deal, but it's something to do.

Wednesday is "Chemo Teach" day where they tell me about all the wonderful procedures and side effects of the chemotherapy. I've been doing a little research on my own, and the Doctor M has enlightened me a little, too. One of the fun decisions Bryan and I got to make the other night was whether or not we wanted to have children. Because that's an easy one to answer, right? Chemo will probably cause infertility and early menopause, so  if we want kids we'll have to do some egg harvesting (all these terms are just awesome, huh?). Bryan and I have never really been on the baby train, but it does get a little harder when you realize you don't have the option to change your mind later on.

Chemo will probably start at the end of the week. And there on....

So I'll be in chemo for the next 6 months or so. Which also means that the training schedule for work that I was hoping to invigorate this winter will also have to wait. I've had my personal work goals on the back burner for the last year or so while I babysat the Rocky Mountain National Park Centennial Celebration. Since I won't be able to travel to help out with trainings at other NPS sites, I won't really be able to move forward with my professional goals for probably another year. But apparently I'm  not supposed to worry about that. I have cancer. Why should my professional life that I've been working to build for the last 15 years be important to me? (Please note the sarcasm in my virtual voice).

But life is about impermanence. Things are never what we plan. Enjoy the day. It was a beautiful sunrise.

I think I need a cocktail later (maybe a beer for the Broncos game).
I think you should have one, too.

P.S. Hanging out with men who have been drinking beer for 4 hours at a Beer Fest and listening to them try to make me feel better about having breast cancer is possibly the funniest thing (and sweet in a very funny way, too) I have ever heard. Nuff said.