I saw my regular surgeon and my family doctor today. We know that there's some kind of mass around the scar from the 2006 lumpectomy but the mammogram showed nothing there. My surgeon had already done one fine needle biopsy and a core biopsy, and because the mass is still there, he did another fine needle biopsy today. I wasn't expecting that - at least the area there is numb so it didn't hurt. I should get the results in a week or two.
At some point I may get tired of getting needle biopsies done there. Maybe he'd cut the whole mass out? Or maybe just take the breast?
After that I saw my family doctor to get a prescription renewed and to kind of bring him up to speed on what's going on with my teeth and jaw. He says that there is a very small chance that the less-dense areas in the jaw are new bone mets. He's going to talk to my oncologist and see what she thinks. We'll see - a bone scan isn't so bad. A CT scan or MRI might be better to see what the areas look like, but what do I know?
Funny, when going through this kind of diagnostic process, the main focus is the issue itself and the tests while the world around passes by almost unnoticed. I'm trying to stay relaxed so that I don't get anxious (and I'm hoping that nothing *really bad* happens for a while, either in my personal life or the world). At the same time, there's this sense of unreality, as though I'm watching all of this happen to someone who just happens to be me. I think it's partly because I don't know what all the outcomes could be or even which outcome is most preferable, so I'm not all that emotionally vested in any one particular outcome. I'm thinking that this is not such a bad thing, at least for now.
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