Surprise!! (3/14/2014)

So it took 2 weeks for me to finally come to terms with the fact that I wouldn't need chemotherapy and that would be ok, better than ok. I was finally starting to understand how lucky I was that I wouldn't need chemotherapy, but strangely felt like I wasn't a breast cancer survivor because I didn't have to suffer as much as others I knew who were in the same position. None of the side effects of chemotherapy, and they are really bad ones! And I wasn't going to have to lose my hair! I know that sounds stupid but it was a big fear, even though I was going to do whatever it took.

Well as I was moving on with my life, I had completely forgotten about that second opinion from UW because it had been almost 3 weeks. I figured no news was good news, I mean how different could a pathology report be with the same specimen?!! And then I got a call from my oncologist, usually he tells me things over the phone, but he wanted me to come in and see him that afternoon. I knew that it was going to be bad news, I know how this works! I went alone and that was probably a mistake, but I knew what was coming so I thought I was prepared.

And of course the pathology report from UW came back positive for invasive breast cancer, exactly what they always thought. But how could they have missed that! Not only was it invasive, the pathologist had 5 other pathologists verify her findings because it was such a complex tumor. Trust me when I tell you that you don't want to be interesting to doctors, you want to be run of the mill! So I have triple negative, aggressive, highly replicating invasive breast cancer. I wasn't mad as much as I was sad,  because this means that I have to have chemotherapy (after I had talked myself into how great it was that I didn't need it). This changes everything, including my prognosis, now instead about a 5% change of recurrence with metastatic disease, I had a 30% chance! Not to mention the fact that if they had known this to begin with, then I would have had chemo a lot earlier, ideally before surgery. I felt that every step of the way, they had tried to not see what was truly there all along, not anyone's fault per se but definitely not lucky. But then if my oncologist hadn't sent it for second opinion, I could have had metastatic disease in a few years, so he did save my life and for that I was definitely lucky and grateful! And more good news was that my nodes were still negative based on the second opinion as well so I was stage 1.