THE EVENING AFTER

Sometimes it feels like we’ve joined a new club. It feels like we’ve got our new membership badges and we’re being trained from scratch. Essentially that’s exactly what it is. For example, they don’t class cancer in stages here in the UK. I always remember Michael Douglas announcing that he had stage 4 throat cancer on David Letterman. That’s more of a US thing apparently (Although I’m almost 100% sure that we were told Sam’s was stage 2 breast cancer last week). Anyway, here in the UK we use the TNM grading system:

T stands for tumour
N stands for nodes
M stands for metastasis

(Still tuned in? Good, because I wasn’t at this point)

Sitting in the corridor of the hospital is a nightmare. I’m getting more and more nervous, whereas Sam (who has been wobbly all day) is now remarkably calm. We are surrounded by leaflet after leaflet about detecting breast cancer or preventing breast cancer. It’s weird knowing that we can skip all those now and just go straight to the welcome sheets.

We are taken into a room and told that our consultant will be here shortly. Turns out this is the numero uno of breast cancer surgeons here at the hospital. Breast is all she deals with. The other two consultants that we’ve seen have both been general surgeons but with the man having a special interest in boobies. (dirty boy!)

2 ladies walk into the room (not the start of a joke) , introduce themselves and immediately apologise for not being the same people that we saw last week or the same people that we saw the week before that. (They like you to try to see the same people each week so you build up a rapport and feel more comfortable). The head honcho sits down and opens her file. Inside are the MRI results. The tumour is 4cm long (shaped like a dumbell) and in the left breast. It doesn’t look like it has spread to the lymph nodes (so far so good) and there is no detection of cancer in the right breast or anywhere else in the body (Phew!). It’s quite a sizable tumour though. At 4cm it will mean Sam would have to have a full mastectomy to cut it out. There is no way they’re going to get this sucker out neatly.

Last week the consultant ( a different one) said that the main priority was to have the tumour cut out within 2-3 weeks but now that tactic seems to have changed due to the size. The course of action is now to have “upfront” chemotherapy to try to shrink the size of it so that there is a smaller area to cut out. This would avoid a full mastectomy and also inform them if the tumour reacts to the chemotherapy. So it looks like the plan is this:

Hospital tomorrow (Thursday) to see other people and have a pre op where they draw all over Sam’s armpit with a marker pen.

Biopsy operation to have a couple of lymph nodes removed to check no cancer present. (This Friday).

Appointment to see the chemo doctor to discuss the timetable of treatment (next Wednesday) and hopefully get the results of the lymph node biopsy.

And then go from there………..

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention Sam’s grading of cancer. It is:

T – 2
N – 0
M – 0

Just thought you may want to know.