A few days before my 60th birthday, I found out I had breast cancer. That was almost 3 months ago, and now, I am preparing for surgery. I created this blog thinking that journaling would be a good way to express the day to day ups and downs of this journey. Also, it serves as a means for family and friends to check in on my progress without my having to email everyone.

So just a quick synopsis of how it all started....
First - the leaky nipple. I watched it for about a week, and went to the dr. That day, they did a mammogram, an ultrasound and went right to a biopsy.
Next was an appt. with a surgeon in Saratoga, who told me I had stage zero, DCIS. But since it was in two different sites, and the cancer was comedo type, he said he  recommended a full mascectomy.
Thinking this was pretty extreme for stage zero, I made an appointment for a second opinion at Mass General in Boston.
In the meantime, I started an alternative therapy regime of Accupuncture, Qigong and Chinese Medicine. I started seeing Michael Wayne, my accupuncturist in Saratoga, and Joe Rogers, a medical qigong practitioner in Salem, Ma. I had known both of these men for years, and had great faith in them.
When I got to Mass General, I found out the dr. had misread the pathology reports. While one site was DCIS stage zero, the other was stage two, and invasive. This definately changed the picture. The dr. said she felt it would be safe to try the alternative therapies for another month, and we could rescan to see if there was any improvement. I felt like I was rushing the alternative therapies, but it was worth a try. Unfortunately, at the end of the month - there was no change in the tumors.
So here we are preparing for surgery.

Yesterday, I met with the surgeon, the chemo oncologist, the radiation oncologist, and a whole assortment of people from Mass General. Today, I had a bone scan, and a cat scan. I'm praying that there is no sign of metastisis. Apparently, the triple negative cancer that I have, has a very high rate of matastisis, and is fast growing. The good news is that this is true for the first 3 years, but after that, the rate of recurrance goes down substantially. Their answer is to bombard it with chemo and radiation so it doesn't come back. I am not comfortable with aggressive chemo. I will wait to see if it has spread, and if there is any lymph node involvement, which we won't know until surgery.