What To Do About the Boobs

First of all, this round of chemo can kiss my ass. Just in the last couple of days have I been able to eat meals, and it’s time to do chemo again. As each round gets progressively shittier, I will not be surprised if the awful nausea/gross taste lasts the full three weeks between rounds. Pissed and disappointed, but not surprised.

I also have two new side effects:

1. My thumbnails are doing this.

Some chemo patients lose their nails entirely. I’m hoping that doesn’t happen, but I also thought I might be spared this side effect.

2. Neuropathy. At least I think that’s what this burning itchy feeling is on my hands. It’s not constant, thankfully, but it sometimes wakes me up at night. What freaks me out about this side effect is that it can be permanent.

So that’s the sucky stuff. Here’s the good news: In my last post I fretted about what to do with my boobs. This past week I met with my breast surgeon, Dr. Superman (formerly known as Dr. Boobcutter) and I have a lot more clarity now. He assured me that “cutting everything off” will not statistically improve my survival rate, but if it will give me peace of mind, he will do it. He also, regarding my “one boob that’s a wonder of science and one that’s had three kids” concern, told me that if I had a mastectomy on the right breast, when they did reconstruction they’d do a little perk-up on the left breast and get them as symmetrical as possible. So that made me feel better.

What the plan is, though, is to start with a lumpectomy. On examining the bad boob, Supe was unable to feel any sign of Turdy the tumor! He said he’s “thrilled” with the chemo. So all he’ll have to remove is the little metal clip that Dr. Moviestar put in when he did the original biopsy. He’ll take that plus some surrounding tissue. It will most likely be a small enough amount that while Right Boob will have a scar, it won’t be the ginormous shark bite disfigurement I was imagining.

The pathologist will examine this tissue and look for any microscopic cancer cells that may have escaped. What we’re looking for are “clean margins” aka no bad cells in the tissue around where Turdy used to live. If the margins aren’t clear, then we may go back and do the mastectomy after all.

Here’s the stinky part: After Dr. Supe consulted with Dr. Cap, they decided that because I have those four bad lymph nodes under my arm, I will also need to have a sentinel node dissection. They are going to–brace yourself–inject a radioactive tracer into my areola. Yes, boys, that’s Nipple City.

Hopefully, I will already be knocked out for the surgery when it’s Tracer Time? Anyway, the tracer will flow to the lymph nodes and Dr. Supe will run a wand with a Geiger counter over my armpit and see which nodes react to the tracer. Those are the nodes that he’ll remove because they are most likely to have cancer cells. It’s a better option than taking all of them out and checking each for cancer. I can’t help but wonder if a radioactive boob will trigger a metamorphosis from part-time bitch into full-time She-Hulk.

I told Dr. Supe that I wanted to do everything possible to prevent a recurrence. And he told me that with HER2+ cancer, the most critical time is the first five years. With other flavors of breast cancer I guess it can come back within 15 years, but with HER2+, as he put it, “If we go five years without a recurrence, you come back to my office and we’ll drink champagne.”

Deal.

So here’s the tentative schedule:

• Round 4 chemo July 9
• Round 5 July 30
• FINAL round of chemo Aug 20!!!
• Lumpectomy and sentinel node dissection the week of Sept 7
• Start radiation (5x week for 5-7 weeks is standard) first week of Oct

And then? I should be done.