Breast Cancer – had the lumpectomy, now what?

After waiting the required 2 weeks I got the results from the biopsy of the lumpectomy. (Wow that is a bit of a tongue twister). The results were good. There was no actual cancer in the cells that they removed. The cells were confirmed as pre-cancer cells. Good news! Whew! Now onto radiation, right? Not…

Turns out that the surgeon wasn’t happy with the margins that they had. For those that don’t know what that means, it is the area around the affected cells. He wanted to have a margin of 2 cm on all sides. Turns out they had 1.9 on one side so he was happy with that, but the other side was only .9 cm. So, what does that mean? You guessed it, more surgery.

This surgery wasn’t as critical as the first so I had to wait even longer to get my date for that. I did eventually get the date for that at the end of July. Of course, that would mean another 2 weeks after that to be sure that the margins were what the doctor wanted. Thankfully, the surgery went as expected and the recovery was minimal, other than the dreaded getting the system back up and running. Bring on the prune juice!

Now my next two weeks waiting was done and I had my, hopefully, last appointment with the surgeon. He was happy with the results. Okay, now what? Now onto radiation and possibly medication following. It was doubtful I would need the medications, but I was prepared for them anyway. Back to doing my research on that. Tamoxifen would be the drug of choice. Thankfully there is lots of information about that on the net. Thank you uncle Google!

So now on to radiation treatments. He suggested that I have 16, but that would also be up to the radiology oncologist. I was then referred to the Cancer Clinic at Abbotsford hospital. I had to wait for them to call me with a date for my consult, so, you guessed it, more waiting…

Stay tuned for the next segment of Breast Cancer – The Radiation