If all goes according to plan, in 24 hours I will be in the recovery room and my breasts will be in the trash.  I am still feeling good, ready to start this fight.  Every once in awhile my mind wanders and I start thinking of the gory details but I am trying to not focus on that.  

My son Tommy surprised me yesterday.  I told him he did not need to fly home to be here for the big event.  He ignored me.  It is so nice to have my family with me right now.  Tonight we will have a nice family dinner with both my sisters joining us.  I am so grateful for my sister, Suzanne, interrupting her very busy schedule to come up from So Cal for moral support.  I am so blessed.

Tomorrows festivities will begin with a procedure at 10 AM that has something to do with dye, a big needle and my lymph nodes.  Actually it starts 2 hours before that when I have to apply special ointment to my boob (my surgeon referenced frosting a cake.  I miss cake).  I have to liberally apply this special numbing goo all over my left breast and then cover it with Cling Wrap.  I have no idea why this makes me laugh every time I think about it but it does.  Then I get to have the dye procedure done.  When that is over I go to the hospital and check in.  Surgery is at 1pm.

Surgery is expected to  take several hours and then an hour in recovery.  I should be settled in a regular room by 7.  I will try to post an update tomorrow night.

Thank you for all of the support and well wishes.  I truly appreciate it.

Who would have ever thought I would be going to a plastic surgeon?  Not me!  I felt like a fish out of water.  It is a sad day when you are more comfortable going to an oncologist than a plastic surgeon.

Now that I was rubbing elbows with the beautiful people I really wished I had dressed for the occasion.  Somehow my comfy sweats and pink shirt seem tacky.

I am ushered to a exam room and instructed to put on the gown.  By now I am well aware that the opening goes in the front.  The surgeon walks in and says “Hello Mrs Ghilotti, advanced stage breast cancer”  I tell him he can call me Genevieve.  Being referred to as Advanced Stage Breast Cancer kinda freaks me out.  Then he gets down to describing the surgery complete with a magic marker and my boob as the canvas.  After a few minutes of coloring he starts going in to detail about the nitty gritty of slicing and dicing.  I cut him off reassuring him that I am fine with just knowing he has done this kind of thing before and hopefully I will be asleep during the surgery and he won’t be needing me to assist.

Next, he takes photos.  He says I don’t need to smile.  I smiled anyway. 

Now we start looking at new parts for my breasts.  He tells me I have a lot of flesh and I am fairly certain that is an insult but I am still smiling.   Then he reminds me that I will no longer have breasts, I will have mounds.  They will look like breasts under a sweater but when I look at myself naked in the mirror they will just be mounds.  I stopped him right there.  Told him in no uncertain terms do I ever look at myself naked in the mirror!  If I have successfully avoided doing that for the last 15 years why on earth would I start looking when I have mounds?  After that I tuned him out and started day dreaming about Almond Joys.

He tells me my weight might make the surgery/recovery more difficult.  I wished I had eaten broccoli before my appointment so I could make him as uncomfortable as he was making me.  I stopped smiling.

My makeover (OK, double mastectomy) is scheduled for Monday, Feb 11.

I have decided to put away my bras and let the girls flop freely for their last days on my body.  I know what you are thinking, why would I be so nice to my boobs after they turned on my and shacked up with cancer?  What can I say, I am a giver.

It is not like I will be jumping on a trampoline or anything.  More mundane activities like grocery shopping for broccoli and other healthy stuff I used to think only hamsters ate.  Seriously, in my ‘better late than never’ attempt to feed my body better, I have eaten more broccoli in the past week than the law should allow.  Just ask my dogs.  Even the pit bulls can’t handle being in my vicinity for too long and those dogs are usually the culprits that clear a room.

Along with the broccoli, I get to sample delicacies like raw almonds, lemon juice, baking soda and raw apple cider vinegar.  Trust me, you have not lived until you have turned yourself in to a human science project and drink lemon juice with baking soda followed by an apple cider vinegar chaser.  Remember those volcanoes kids used to make in high school?  What a ridiculously odd sensation feeling that erupt in your gut.  Blech.

All of this is with the hopes to raise my pH.  Right now it is very low, probably due to the fact my diet used to be based on Lay’s potato chips and Diet Coke.  And bacon.  I miss bacon.

Appointment with the plastic surgeon today….

Today was the day I got my results and discussed the plan to kick some cancer butt.  It is a good news, bad news type of deal.

Good news – I am going to lose some weight next week.   My boobs are about to be medical waste and will be replaced by something perky.  The decision has been made to do surgery first due to the results of the MRI (that will follow in the bad news!).  There was some talk about  just removing the left breast but it was decided to do both.  My right one would have boob envy since the new one will not be saggy and always pointing at my feet.

I will start chemo after the surgery.

Bad news – which is not really bad but definitely not good news like getting a boob job.  The MRI results showed that my lump now has a friend.  A second lump has crashed the party.  Because my cancer is so aggressive and determined to make my breast the ‘go to hot spot’ for the radical cells to hang out, the surgeon wants to condemn this joint that used to be chest.

I am so impressed with my medical team.  My surgeon has a great sense of humor and seems very accommodating although he nixed the idea of giving me something along the lines of Dolly Parton.

I now have a team.  Super.

Apparently my cancer is an aggressive one.  When I first saw my results I thought all of the negatives would be a good thing.  Nope.  My tumor is considered a triple negative which means it is not a hormone based cancer.  Supposedly harder to treat.  My plan calls for chemotherapy followed by a double mastectomy and radiation.  I am thinking that this cancer is going to seriously cramp my style.  Looks like my plans for taking a few of the young horses to some shows next month is not going to happen….

This morning I had a breast MRI.  It was cool.  If I liked techno music I would have bought the album.  It was a lot of repetitive tones, beeps and buzzes.  I could have sworn one of the tones was a robot repeating the word “bill, bill, bill” over and over for 5 minutes straight. Probably a subliminal message installed by the billing department.

Tomorrow I get the results.

It started on Jan 4.  While getting dressed in the morning I found a lump.  A big lump in my left breast.  Surely that had not been there yesterday.   I double checked, checked my finger tips for callouses because there was no way I had a lump.   I triple checked.  No doubt about it, I had a lump.

I called the doctor and got an appointment for Monday morning.

It was a long weekend of worrying and fondling my boob.  Seriously, once you know there is something in there it is hard not to freak out a little.  I showed up at my appointment early.  The nurse was kind, told me that most of the time these lumps turn out to be nothing serious.  Most of the time…..

The Nurse Practioner came in and took a brief history before she ‘met’ my lump.   She said it was likely a cyst and I needed a mammogram.

So, I made an appointment for that.   My boob was smooshed, squished, man handled and flopped on various platforms and trays.

When that fun was over I was asked to wait.  Then I got to repeat the process on the other breast.  Then back to the left again. Apparently the radiologist wanted to see more so off I went for an ultrasound.  Have I mentioned that pride is over rated when you have a lump?   I got to second base with half dozen strangers that day and not one of them bought me a drink.

Next up is a needle aspiration.  The doctors are still convinced it is a cyst.

Another week goes by before the aspiration because everything needs approval from somebody, somewhere.

Aspiration day turns out to be biopsy day because it turns out my cyst is not a cyst after all.  The biopsy was not that bad.  The waiting for results was painful.

My results were ready on a Tuesday morning (of course it was a long holiday weekend!).  I waited by the phone.  Patiently.  Then I called the doctor to remind her about my results.  The receptionist confirmed that the results were on her desk but had not been reviewed yet.  OK.  Patience is a virtue and all that.   A couple hours later I called again.  Ditto.  Finally at 5 minutes before the office  was due to close, I called again.  This time I was placed on hold.  A doctor finally came on, suggested that I was overly anxious or some nonsense.  Then he opened the envelope that would change my life.  He started reading….biopsy results for blah blah blah on blah blah blah Grade 3 out of 3 Infiltrating Ductal Carcinoma.  Then he kept saying he was sorry, very sorry.   He is sorry?  Really?  So I asked him if he was sorry for making me wait all day to get the results or sorry that I have cancer?  He said both.