On October 15th, I was seven days out from having received my biopsy results, and went to my first appointment with a breast surgeon. It was an absolutely awful appointment. Eli and I showed up, pretty happy-go-lucky about the whole thing, and I left there, more than two hours later, a nervous wreck.
I've alluded to this appointment in past posts, but didn't say much about what happened there, so here's a short synopsis. Most of the appointment was spent with the doctor's nurse practitioner who, while well-meaning, said a few things to me during the course of the appointment that completely freaked me out. Her worst transgression, in my view, was the completely unwarranted comment she made about my lymph nodes. During her exam, she decided to do a breast ultrasound, during which she took a quick look at a few lymph nodes, and then proclaimed "well, those look pretty good and normal, but the doctor may want to do a needle biopsy just to make sure everything is okay." Huh? My lymph nodes had not factored into my worries at that point, and honestly, I just looked at her and said "Well, I'm sorry, but I can't deal with that." The doctor came in a few minutes later, looked at the ultrasound picture, tried to assure me that the nodes looked fine, particularly given that I'd just had a biopsy eight days earlier, and told me that no biopsy was necessary. His efforts to calm me were effective, but rather short-lived; I spent the rest of the day and much of weekend (which our family spent at a cabin on Center Hill Lake, by the way) obsessively worrying about whether the cancer in my breast had already spread to my lymph nodes. An unfortunate turn of events, to say the least.
The following Tuesday, I visited a second surgeon, Dr. Jeanne Ballinger, and decided to have her do the surgery. Tomorrow, one month after the upsetting visit with the first surgeon, I will have my 2-week post-surgical visit with Dr. Ballinger. It's hard to believe how much has transpired in such a short period of time. I am so happy and relieved to be on this side of the surgery, and to have received such good news about the state of my disease. I am guessing that Dr. Ballinger will be pleased with my healing process. I've had almost no pain, and only a little discomfort under my arm where she removed two lymph nodes.
I am on the road to recovery. I know that radiation will be long and tiring, but I'm ready to move forward with that, too, so that I can get all of this behind me.
I'll be in touch soon. Thanks again for reading and following my journey.
Erin
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