August 13th Pathology Reports

I got a weird call from Dr. Rocco this evening. I mean, it wasn't weird that she was calling me, but what she said made me feel weird.

Here is what I understood from it.

I am fine I am fine I am fine...I still don't have cancer anymore. But, there is some interesting information in the pathology reports.

First, let me take a moment here to tell you what happened to my breast after they removed it.

Before surgery, I imagined that they would just slice it off and throw it in a big bin in the corner of the operating room. I imagined it landing there with other discarded body parts. Livers, melanomic skin patches, moles, diseased limbs, tumors and cysts would all mingle peacefully before heading off to the incinerator at the end of the day. In my mind, the bin looked like the ones we used at the costume shop to store rolls of fabric; about waist high with a metal rim, as big around as I can hug, and the same color as a brown paper bag. I guess I figured it would be lined with something...like a bright red plastic bag, and labeled "SURGICAL WASTE," or "SOLID PARTS."

I never asked about whether or not this image was correct, because every time it floated into my consciousness, I tried to block it out again. Sorry, to have shared it with you now. I know it's disgusting. Let me assure you, it is not what really happens. (I don't think so anyway.)

I got my first hint of the real story immediately after surgery. Unfortunately, it was so immediately after surgery that I was still pretty medicated and don't have any real memory of it. Here is the interaction with Nurse Susan as my mom (Sandy) recounted it.

***

Nurse Susan enters my curtained room for the first time.

Magic (from the bed-on-wheels): I changed my mind. I want you to put my breast back on.

Susan's eyes get big.

There is a long pause.

Sandy (apologetically) : She's a jokester.

Susan (seriously) : I'm sorry. We can't do that. It's in formaldehyde now.

***
Poor Susan. In relating this incident to me, my mom felt compelled to point out once again that I am "just like Grandpa!"

So now I picture it floating in pale green liquid in a jar only slightly bigger than one you would buy spaghetti sauce in. (I was never a large-breasted woman.) But that isn't accurate either.

Apparently, they slice it and dice it and do all kinds of test on it. They look at pieces of it under microscopes and do things to change its texture and consistency. (I will research more about this whole process and post it later.) It was the results of this post-surgical dissection that Dr. Rocco called to tell me about today.

One. I had an additional disease called Paget's in my right breast. It is also a kind of cancer, and was in the tissue of my nipple. She said symptoms are similar to dermatitis. As she described the symptoms...I said, "I had that!" And I did. In the early part of this year my right nipple had a tiny patch of dry skin that came and went away over few a weeks. I didn't think much of it. I used more lotion. The usual treatment is to either remove the nipple or perform a mastectomy. We just did that, so we're done.

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/DS/00771.html (for more info on Paget's disease of the breast.)

Two. It might not have been In Situ (stage zero, contained, non-life threatening) cancer after all. There are signs that it might have started breaking away from the milk ducts and spreading. The next step after acquiring this information would be to extract my sentinel lymph nodes on the right side and biopsy those for any sign of cancer. We just did that too. The lymph nodes were clean, so we're done.

Nothing has changed. I am still cancer free. I should feel comforted knowing that having the mastectomy and sentinel node biopsy was really really really the right thing to do, for even more reasons than we knew at the time.

But that phone call shook me up. It was like re-living the whole last month all over again, but this time condensed down to a 7 minute phone call.

I have cancer! Oh my god! I might need my nipple removed! Oh, Gross! No, I need a mastectomy! Even worse! Oh, and they'll cut my lymph nodes out! OW! Right! Okay! It's already been done! Everything looks good! You're okay now! Rest and drink lots of fluids, see you later.

Even thought I KNEW everything was okay. Even though I was sitting there in the parked car, looking out at the beautiful ocean and watching the surfers in the fog and hearing Dr. R's kind and reassuring voice in my ear...my heart started pounding and I started sweating and I felt like I was going to cry and scream at the same time.

This is the weirdest thing I have ever been through.