The surgical oncologist ordered new imaging a couple of weeks ago, because of some pain I was experiencing at the tumor site. She could not feel anything concerning, but for piece of mind felt we should take a closer look.
When I was at Charlotte Radiology, it was the first time since my biopsy, and I had a little flashback. It was not fun rehashing those thoughts and fears that flooded my brain. I was taken back to a tiny holding room and asked to change. I am sure you know where this is leading. So, there I was in a pink gown topless waiting on a mammogram. The tech was extremely fast at getting these images done. She seemed to know what she was doing, but very hurried. Within minutes she leads me back to the tiny windowless room and I wait. I waited for what seemed to be awhile and she pops her head back in and says we need more images. Not exactly what you want to hear, but I had an idea why.
The tech leads me into the boob squishing room and commences to posing me in awkward positions taking lots of photos. A little back store here……I originally had two tumors. One of the tumors were close to the surface, where I could see and feel it. It was the larger of the two. Then I had another that was close to the chest wall. It was small to begin with and very hard to photograph. During the biopsies, the radiologist inserts a titanium clip into each tumor to mark the area. That clip serves a purpose. It helps the surgeon know where the area of concern is, so that they can remove the tissue and margins during surgery. This helps ensure that the area is free of cancerous cells or (hopefully) now dead cells and sends the tissue off to pathology.
Well, the tech could not get the smaller of the two areas to show up on the screen. She tried several times and even told me that she has every bit of breast tissue on film. Now, I peek at the images quickly, as she leads me back to the tiny windowless room – where I again wait. I tired not to read into any of this too much, but my mind starts to wander. The image I saw still lit up bright white. That tells me, I still have cancer present. I mean, I am halfway through chemo, can’t a girl dream that it would be gone? But I am also realistic and know that it does not work that way, but I was still holding out for some positive news.
After what seemed to be forever, the same tech leads me to a nearby ultrasound room. They want to try to find the missing clip another way. She starts squirting warm jelly all over my chest and goes to town searching for the titanium clip. She does not have luck.
Next, the radiologist comes in to try her luck. She takes some measurements and looks around. Guess what, still no clip. She discussed with me at this time the need for a mastectomy. The small tumor that was once holding that clip is gone. It has completely disappeared and the little clip too. They believe the tumor was dissolved from the chemo (praise GOD!), but not sure what happened to the clip. They said they have never seen this happen. She assumes the clip has migrated somewhere, hopefully inside the breast, but they can’t find it at this time. She said the mastectomy would be necessary because they can not pinpoint the location of the original area of concern, since the clip is gone. I was already leaning towards this decision, so that was not a hard blow. The other positive news that came from this imaging was that the larger of the two tumors was drastically smaller and responding very well to the chemo. We have 6 more weeks of chemo left to zap that sucker into oblivion.
Let us pray for complete response to chemotherapy and that my body is ridden of any rouge cancer cells floating head to toe. God is the ultimate physician and I trust him.