I've figured out my problem.  I've approached this whole thing the wrong way.  When I first found the lump and went to my gyno, he was certain it was just a hematoma from a well-placed granddaughter kick, but he sent me for smashogram anyway.  I believed him and put the "C" word at the back of my mind.  The smashogram and sonogram were a little more disturbing since the lump wasn't directly underneath the bruise, so he sent me to his surgeon "just so he could get a good night's sleep."  Need I mention I haven't had a good night's sleep since? 

Well, the surgeon wouldn't have been too awfully concerned were it not for some dimpling of the skin around the lump.  Yep, you guessed it.  Biopsy time.

And so on and so forth.  Well, this doctor or that doctor wouldn't really be worried about whatever if it weren't for . . . right up to the nurse who couldn't get the IV in me and had to call in the anesthesiologist who inserted it in my wrist joint.  After the modified radical mastectomy removing my left breast, everytime they came to my room to ask my level of pain, I told them that the pain at the surgical site was a 2 or 3, but the IV site was a 6 or 7.  My surgery ended at 11:00 in the morning.  Finally, at around 10:00 that night, the evening shift nurse finally said, "There's something wrong.  Your IV site shouldn't be giving you more pain than your surgical site."  You think?  By this time, my entire right hand was bruised and I could barely move it at the wrist.  She moved the IV to a vein she found midway between the wrist and my elbow on the underside of my arm; and within an hour, I could start moving my wrist a little bit.  They can't find veins in the crook of my elbow anymore because they're all pretty much collapsed as a result of the heart attack ten years ago.

I waited from Tuesday until the following Monday for the results from pathology about the nodes.  That was a nightmare.  I was supposed to call his office Monday morning for the results.  THAT was another nightmare I'm not even going to discuss because it still makes me cry.  Around 1:00, I found out that my "nodes were clean and all the margins were within normal range."  According to my surgeon, that was VERY good news!  Have I mentioned that all this time, I'd been led to believe that if the cancer hadn't reached the lymphnodes, there really wouldn't be a need for chemo?  That's very important later in my story.  Anyway, by the time I got the results from the surgeon at 1:00 in the afternoon, my world had already been shattered because my little girl had lost her baby earlier in the morning.  Technically, the fetus had stopped growing at 8 weeks and she was 10 weeks, but she had found out that the baby she thought she was carrying simply wasn't to be.  She'd been telling me for several weeks that there was something wrong, and that she just knew her doctor wasn't going to hear a heartbeat.  There's a lot to be said for mother's intuition.

Anyway, I had to keep the appointment I'd made ages ago with an oncologist, and yep, you guessed it.  Even with all the "really good test results," if I were the oncologist's wife, he would want her to have chemo.  I guess that's a pretty damned strong recommendation for chemo, huh?  He says as it stands right now, there's a 66 2/3% chance the cancer wouldn't return.  You guys can do the math.  That leaves a pretty good percentage that it would.  The problem is, if it returns, it comes back in the lungs, the bones, the blood, or somewhere else they can't cure like they can in the breast.  They can treat it and hopefully get it to go into remission, but the odds are nothing like they are if they kill it when it's breast cancer.  So there you go.  Once again, the only remaining hopes I had have been dashed.

He's sending the tumor to a lab in California for a test called Oncotype DX.  He says it's only been around for a year or two.  I googled it.  It's pretty interesting.  There's a remote chance that the results would come back saying that my chances of recurrence are even smaller than the 33 1/3%, but I'm not falling for that.  The test will also give the doctor a far better idea of the genetics of the cancer and what it's going to take to kill it.  I know there's a place where you can put links for related articles, but I can't seem to get there from here.  If anyone is interested in the Oncotype DX test, here's a link that has a pretty detailed article about it:  http://www.genomichealth.com/oncotype/pathome.aspx - and no, I haven't read it, there's only so much I can take in one week.  I've had my fill for the week.  I put it in My Favorites.  After I've had a break, I'll take a look at it.  Oh wait, I have an appointment Monday with the surgeon who led me to believe that with clean nodes and clear margins, I was home free.  He's taking the tubes out of my side.  I guess I forgot to mention the tubes I've had in my side since October 16th.  That's been a treat.  I get to drain them three times a day, and change the dressing once a day.  My daughter was changing the dressing for me, but after Monday, I just couldn't bring myself to ask her to load Maizie into the car to come over here and change the dressing - soooo, I've been doing it myself.  I can't even tell you how difficult that is when you have limited range of motion in the arm under which the dressing located, and that arm is still numb from the loss of two levels of lymphnodes.

So there you go.  I've gone from "Oh, that's nothing but a hematoma.  Boy, she really kicked you!" to having the lump sent to California to find out the best way to kill the cancer inside it.  He doesn't normally do that since it's pretty expensive, but I think that when the tears started to flow at his first mention of chemo, he thought maybe it was a good idea - or maybe it was when I started to look like a deer in the headlights.  Anyway, the oncologist had no idea that he was just another in a long line of doctors who was pulling the rug of hope out from under my feet.  Chemo has been my greatest fear since I felt that lump what seems like a lifetime ago.

It has truly come in handy to have my very good friend and employer at my side, who just so happens to be an attorney accustomed to taking notes at depositions and trial.  I can't tell you how many times over the past couple of months I have just gone to a "happier place" in my mind when I didn't want to hear anymore of the poison coming from my "health care providers" mouths.  Luckily, Pam was there and knew exactly when I was no longer conscious of what the doctor was saying simply because I chose not to be.  I may have been looking right at him, but my eyes were looking beyond him.  She knows the look very well.  It's been trained on her a time or two.  When we were on the way back to wherever, she would fill me in on what I had missed.  It was a damned good thing too.  Had there been a pop quiz later, I would have failed miserably.  Isn't it funny what the mind can do to protect itself?  You reach a point where it says "That's enough for now.  This is more than I can handle," and it just goes somewhere else for awhile so you can process the hell that has become your life a little bit at a time.  You go home, watch t.v., read some of your book, or play with your grandbaby, then read some of the crap the doctor sent home with you.  Better yet,  you call your buddy and ask her what you need to know.  Then you process that and go on.

So, what I started off to tell you is this, I've decided to set my "expectation bar" as low as I possibly can.  Then the only way I can go is up...