I had another easy chemo with only one day of pain and am planning to see my clients on Thursday and Sunday of this week. I think it's the neulasta shot that brings on the incredible pain all over my upper body around my lymph nodes. It's a shot everyone gets the day after chemo that is supposed to increase your white cells by pulling them out of your bone marrow. Everyone told me about bone aches with this shot, but I experience pain in the base of my head, my throat lymph nodes and my upper arms. So again, I am unusual where it comes to immune stuff.
We went to check in with my surgeon today. I always enjoy seeing him. He's very calming and seems like he knows what he's talking about from all his experience for so many years. His office is really not much. Makes me wonder if he doesn't need to make it fancy due to his reputation in this town.
Anyway, my biggest question to him today was: is it better for me to get this surgery now and get rid of the potential for these cells to travel elsewhere and then finish up with the chemo after the surgery to clean my body out? He told me it doesn't work that way. It's better to continue on with the fight, rather than take time off for surgery and let those wayward cells multiply. That perspective really helped.
It also helped when while he was checking me, in astonishment, he called over Geoff. I wasn't sure if he was going to have Geoff check me too or what! Instead, he just showed him how small he thinks the center of the tumor is right now compared to how it was when I first came in. He said the word, "2 centimeters", which would make it less than half it's original size. What had been tripping me up in my own checks was that there's so much scar tissue. He knows the difference between what scar tissue feels like and tumor feels like.
The other thing he settled more in my mind was the option of having a lumpectomy vs. a mastectomy. Even tho the lumpectomy sounds so much better, I have more chance of recurrence in that side due to it's size. Knowing my history, I'm not one to have to deal with continually checking and wondering. So I'm more settled to having double mastectomies. Though the right side could be saved, it too had a nodule and I don't want to have to worry about recurrence - at least the lymph on that side don't need to come out. The lymph on my left side do need to come out since the sentinel node was positive...which is worrisome but gives me more of a chance of not having recurrence.
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