Follow-up Treatment

This past week I met with both Drs. Eisenberg (oncologist) and Batra (plastic surgeon). I met with Dr. Eisenberg prior to surgery to get a general idea of what would be necessary in the way of follow up treatment following surgery. This was all preliminary pending surgery results. The results weren't quite as good as expected. The cancer spread into the lymph nodes and 3 of 12 were positive for carcinoma. I will need to have some follow up chemotherapy but it's undecided about radiation.

Chemotherapy has certainly come a long way over the years. My chemo treatments will be once every three weeks for four months. Each treatment takes about 2 hours. The day after chemo I go in for a shot that helps boost the white blood cells. None of this will happen until I am at least a month out from surgery.

The oncologist isn't sure about whether radiation is necessary. Normally, if there are 4 or more lymph nodes that show carcinoma the next step is radiation. Since I only had 3 test positive he wants me to talk to the radiation doctor about whether treatment is necessary. I'm really hoping to bypass radiation treatment if possible but I'll do whatever is necessary.

I also saw the plastic surgeon this week. He took the last two drains out which was a victory in and of itself. I'm getting more active everyday and was always getting the drains caught on things which would cause them to tug on my skin. I still have the stitches and staples which are pretty uncomfortable. They will stay in until the tissue expanders come out so probably another 4-6 weeks. The tissue expanders were put in under the  chest muscle to expand the skin. The skin needs to be expanded to make room for the implants (aka new boobs!). The expanders are like an uninflated balloon with a magnetic tag that extends away from the balloon. The surgeon uses a small magnet to locate the magnetic tag on the expander. Once it's located he inserts a needle and injects saline solution into the expander. He will continue to do this every week or two before putting in the implants. It wasn't particularly painful when he did the injections one side got very uncomfortable afterwards. Later that day and the day following I felt achy all over, much like body aches from the flu. It's better today but I hope this isn't something that happens each time they are expanded.