God’s finger

Today I knew that I was either going to find out:

#1 You have terminal cancer.  (Stage IV (metastasized breast cancer) is considered terminal as it is not curable.)

#2 We don’t know yet; you might have:

a. Breast cancer that has metastasized to the lung, and the biopsy needle missed it.  (“Missing it” happens in 10% of these biopsies).

b. An infection (or other-sciencey-words-that-I-can’t-remember) that is not life-threatening.

c. Lung cancer.  (But this is a really teeny tiny probability.)

And I got Door #2, which seems like a huge victory.  Dr. Wonderful spoke with the pathology lab to learn that the sample they took during Friday’s biopsy was “non-diagnostic”, which means more tests/samples needed.  As Dr. Wonderful always says, the positive is much easier to understand than the negative when looking at results.

The next step is to definitively find out whether I am dealing a., b., or c. as listed above.  Unfortunately, the only way to crack that nut is to have surgery to remove the entire spot (10mm x 11mm, in my upper right lung) that showed up on the PET scan last week.  So, I’m having a consult this week with a pulmonary surgeon who will go through my ribs to get to the spot in my lung; he will take out a section of my lung along with the spot.  It is a significant surgery (3-5 day hospital stay).  After we get the pathology from this surgery, we will know which of the three possibilities we are dealing with.

Dr. Wonderful made it clear that if I were an eighty-year-old patient, he would opt to re-scan  at a later date and “watch the spot”.  But, for me, he says he doesn’t want to “watch and wait”.  I LOVE this about Dr. Wonderful.  He is on it, he is aggressive in his diagnostic and treatment techniques.  He knows I have a lot to live for.

I’m pretty stoked about having this surgery (I’m weird, I know.)  It will mean a definitive answer.

1.  It is not cancer–yippee!  I won’t be mad I went through an “unnecessary” biopsy and surgery because I will be so freaking excited that I’m still cancer free!!!!

2.  It is cancer, but (fingers crossed) we got clean margins and you are back to NED (No Evidence of Disease) status.  I’ll still be Stage IV, and have a whole lot of chemo in my future, but I love NED.

So, I see this news as good news today.  I will not be completely relaxed well, ever until we get the next round of results.  Thank you for your prayers–can it be that God’s finger is on that spot on my lung?  I believe it to be true…

I have had armies praying for me, and I believe that prayers make a difference.  Please continue to pray!

Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  –2 Corinthians 4:16-17