The next step

so I think I am officially a survivor which the date that begins varies with different people.  For some it is the day you finish treatment.  Some the day you receive your diagnosis because every day after that you are surviving.  I think I will use December 30th - easy to remember.  

Dr. Z said my echogram was great, I handled treatment very good.  She is not recommending radiation because I only had one sentinel node that had any cancer cells out of the 5 they took.  However, some radiation oncologist would disagree with her and recommend radiation anyway.  She said she has never recommended radiation for circumstances like mine and never had a re-occurrence but she wanted me to know the option was there if I felt strongly about doing more prevention.

Then, she reviewed the notes and said the small tumor was a slight positive for hormone receptors.  She there is recommending tamoxin.  This is different than she normally would recommend but the Breast Cancer Symposium in San Antonio changed her opinion where doctors and research shows you should do everything possible for prevention and that you have many different cells that can get the different cancers and if there is just one or two cells lying dormant waiting for a hormone receptor to come their way to grab it then we should do prevention.  So, I will be taking tamoxin and if the side effects are bad then she will re-evaluate.  Ugh.  But that is okay.  I also asked her about reoccurrence, is having another mastectomy a viable option from a treatment standpoint since I was going to have reduction anyway.  She said no, not from a treatment stand, most woman never get cancer in the other breast.  However, if every day I am going to wake up and spend my day worrying about getting cancer on the other side, then it may be something to do for the mental health.  Of course, as anything in life, there are no guarantees.  There are woman who have reoccurrence and we read about that all the time.

So, I go back in March and will go back every 3 months for 2 years.  Then every 6 months for 3 years and the 5 year mark is the point where it returns to annual.  There may be a clinical trial available for follow up medication for hormone positive and I told her I would be interested.  Why not - anything I can do to help.

Oh, she also said eat healthy, get rid of the sugar and crap, eat lots of plant based foods, and exercise and keep active.  Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is imperative both physially and mentally.  :-)

She also said "take the port out" whenver I am ready - no reason to keep it.  :-)   I might do that in February (maybe President's Day) :-) and before I go to Florida.   Then I only need to have it flushed one time.  

I will definitely wait for 6 months or more before I contemplate reconstruction/reduction.  I really want to get a little more healthy.  That recovery time will take 6 weeks or more and I really don't want to do that until my job situation has been resolved.   Gotta stay real you know.