Breast Cancer Blog

Monday, September 10, 2012

We called Juli at 9:30AM and she told us the Ultra Sound report acknowledged that Sue has a mass on both her thyroid and her back, but that it did not appear to be cancer. Because of her aggressive cancer in her breast, those other areas need to be checked to make sure. We scheduled a biopsy for today at 1PM at the St. Cloud Hospital to check her thyroid and the lump in her back. We will know the results of the biopsy in a few days.

We also asked Juli about the risk of going ahead and having her reconstruction surgery at the same time of her double mastectomy. Both surgeries will take 6 to 8 hours, vs. 4 hours if it is just the mastectomy with no reconstruction. With a longer surgery, there is more of a risk that complications could delay the chemotherapy, which normally would start three weeks after surgery.

We prefer getting both surgeries done now, rather than doing one and having to wait one year before doing another major surgery. There would be stress involved in the anticipation of having to go through another major surgery after she recovers from the chemotherapy. Juli said it is fine to have both surgeries now and then wait until she recovers from the surgery to start chemotherapy, assuming the biopsy shows no sign of cancer.

As it stands right now, Sue will have outpatient surgery on Friday September 14 to have her sentinel lymph nodes removed. If that surgery shows no sign the cancer has spread, then she will have the mastectomy with the DIEP Flap reconstruction surgery on Friday September 21. Both surgeries will be at the St. Cloud Hospital. She will probably be in the hospital for 4 days after her surgery on September 21.

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