Is it positive or negative? Well, sort of . . .

The results for the lymph node testing came back this week. It seems that my cancer wants to be confusing. Although it is definately infiltrating carcinoma, it is slow-growing and hormone responsive which is good. Although it is slow-growing, I am young, which in this case is bad (more chance of recurrence). So . . . confusing! Do we freak out or not? Now, the lymph node results are positive, but only a little positive. Huh? Well, apparently one of the four sentinel (primary) nodes they removed had a micrometastasis. That means that they found a 1.5 mm bit of cancer + cells in there. The question then became: Is that positive or negative? My medical oncologist wants to treat me fairly aggressively to be sure and get every microscopic cell that could be traveling around in my body. I like that idea. I have 60 years ahead of me and do not want to worry about getting metastasized breast cancer in my bones 10 years from now! We came up with a plan to start the chemo next week. She is going to treat me with the most effective (read: hard-core) drugs for 4 rounds. We will then proceed with surgery (don't know what kind yet). If the surgery shows that the tumors have melted (as they expect them to!), then we can stop. If there are still cells present, we will continue with another 4 rounds of therapy after I am healed from the surgery.

I got my hair cut short on Saturday. It is really cute. My hairdresser is totally awesome! Not only do I look sassy and stylish, but she spent 1.5 hours on my hair and then refused to let me pay her! She wanted to do it for me. Too cool. When the time comes, I am supposed to call her and let her cut it super short to ease my transition to hairlessness. I also ordered a wig from www.wiggoddess.com. The owner, Clare, is awesome. She spent an hour with me over the phone going over styles and trying to find a color to match the pictures and hair samples I had sent. Why did I order a wig over the phone? Well, long story short, I was traumatized by the owner of Flair Wig Shop on Denbigh Blvd. She was rude and had all the compassion of a turnip. She chastized me for not being able to "just pick out a wig and choose your color". I have warned as many nurses and cancer patients as possible not to go to or recommend her store.

The kids are doing fine. When I asked Mary what she would think if my cancer medicine made me "ball headed", she said,"Well, I don't think that would be a very good plan". I said, "Well, what if it did happen?" She said, "Well, I just don't think that's a good idea". My plan is to have a head shaving extravaganza and let the kids shave our heads (Chris is going to shave his head in solidarity!) and draw pictures on them with markers. Maybe that will prevent them from crapping their pants when their mom walks in looking like a Star Trek alien. They will surely think it's fun to de-hair their mom!