Kevin and I went to the Ottawa Cancer Centre at the General Campus of the Ottawa Hospital today to meet my oncologist, Dr. Song. For those of you who are as ignorant as I was about what an oncologist is, she is the doctor who will be responsible for designing my chemotherapy treatment plan.
The abbreviated version of my visit goes like this: She thinks I should have my surgery before my chemotherapy. Once I have the surgery and the tumor is removed they will be able to examine it and get the pathology of the cancer, check for markers and inspect any removed lymph nodes to see if the cancer spread. Once Dr. Song has this pathology then she can design my chemo specifically to my particular case. If I were to have the chemo first the negatives would be that Dr. Song would have to guess which treatment to give me and I would have at least 2 extra chemo applications. The possitive aspects of the chemo first would be that the tumor would still be there and Dr. Song could monitor it's size and see how it react to the chemotherapy.
There was a lot of crying today. I will leave it up to the doctors to decide which treatment I should do first. The only thing that scares me about the chemo is the possible long term effects on my body (it can cause infertility and other forms of cancer like leukemia). I am not affraid of losing my hair...I'll just get really nice hats and a kick ass wig.
What really scares me the most right now is the possible mastectomy. I haven't heard a clear argument from any of my doctors why they think that this might be the way to go but the word "mastectomy" is getting thrown around a lot more than "lumpectomy". It will be harder to recover from a mastectomy and I would need procedures in the future for the reconstruction of a breast. If they tell me that my prognosis would be better with than without the mastectomy then I will be okay with that...but that is not what I am hearing so far, so I just don't get it.
I will blog again when I know more. Dr. Song said she would call me on Monday - I hope I will get some answers.
On the bright note: I ordered Grace's birthday cake today. Mmmmmm. I can't wait.
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Daiva I'm proud of you for being the strong woman that you are and am honoured to follow your journey on your blog. Please know that me and Carson are here for you and Kevin and want to be of assistance in any way we can.
ReplyDeleteHi Daiva, You dont know me... I'm a friend of Laura's. I just wanted to tell you of a situation and suggest something that you may want to discuss with your oncologist. My friend, Doris (Laura knows her), was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a biopsy of the lump done and the incision site unexpectedly did not heal. In fact it seemed to get infected and she needed to do regular dressing changes. When she spoke to her oncologist it turned out that the cancer was an extremely aggressive cancer and that seemed to surprise the doctor. Her oncologist told her that if she had had the surgery and skipped the biopsy the prognosis would not have been good. Because it was such an aggressive cancer it would have spread very quickly after the surgery. My suggestion is to get a biopsy done to find out exactly what kind of cancer you are dealing with. This would also assist the oncologist in determining your chemotherapy treatment. My prayers are with you. God bless you and your family. Monica
ReplyDeleteThanks Laura and Monica. I will definately mention your friend Doris's situation to my doctors. Although, I have already had a biopsy and I know that the sample is being examined for markers as we speak.
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