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This morning at 8:00am as I sat having my morning coffee the phone rang and I noticed Dr. ED on the caller ID. Why is he calling me I have an appointment with him at 10:00?

My heart pounding out of my chest, while thinking this had better be good as I flipped the phone open.

“Good Morning Betty this is Dr.ED. I know you’ll be here at the office in a couple of hours to remove the drain, but I don’t want to keep you waiting on your results, I wanted to call you with good news for a change. All 7 lymph nodes that were removed came back negative.”
Oh, how I do love this man!

What a relief it was too hear those words it sends chill down my spine, and I can only thank God for such a blessing, and continue too pray that the treatment will end as well.

After the office visit, my wonderful…wonderful husband the real love of my life, and I headed out to the beach too celebrate life and enjoy this gorgeous day. We stopped off at our favorite seafood restaurant, where we sat out on the deck over looking the bay, and relished a lunch of lobster & steamers; my favorite.

Life is good!

Round 2 of surgery went well. They removed 7 lymph nodes and sent them off to the pathologist
for testing. Should have the results back in a few days.

This surgery was a little more painful then the first, which I pretty much suspected. I came home with a soft plastic drainage bulb with a plug opening at the end of the tubing connected to the incision area collecting fluid to reduce the swelling and prevent infection. It looks like a little hand grenade secured with a safety pin attached to that godawful jobst bra. (yeah, they gave me another one to burn)

So for the next 5 days it’s me, and the little hand grenade, until it’s removed. I’m beginning to wonder why I just didn’t have them chop the whole damn thing off.

Only kidding, I just had to vent a bit. I’m just feeling a little frustrated right now.
There has to be a better way to start spending my weekends.

This was the first morning I found myself completely alone. My husband had meetings all day, and I had no Dr appointments to go to, or any testing to be done. I began to reflect on the past couple of weeks and how this cold, hearted bastard cancer has come into my life changing it forever, when suddenly I was hit with a full blown emotional meltdown. It was my time alone to process I guess.

I got a grip picked myself up and told cancer to bite me, and I headed out to the mall for a beauty day. I got a hair cut & color and went to Victoria Secrets to treat the - twin sissta’s to a couple of new pink bra’s. On the drive home I stopped off at Staples and bought a pink pen, a pink Sharpie highlighter, pink folder, pink appointment book, pink journal, and a package of pink heart shaped post-it notes. I’m feeling the pink!

Tomorrow I’ll become nipple less, but damn I’ll be looking good!

Walking into the office building I looked up to the bright sunny sky and said, “God give me strength and the rest of you up there I hope your paying attention.”

A nurse escorted me down the hall to the examination room first giving me Dr. E.D’s medical background then proceeded to take my history. When I spoke of my two brothers being taken by cancer she asked if his name was JK. I said yeah that’s him, as it turned out she was a very close friend of his back in high school. I can only believe he was there with me. How freaky is that?

Dr. E.D came in the room and gave me a breast exam stumped that my mammogram came back normal. He suggested we do an excisional biopsy right there in the office seeing where the lump itself was near the surface on the areola below the nipple.

He cleaned the area with an antiseptic and one quick pinch inserting the needle to inject a local anesthetic, a pull here, a tug there, two sutures and the procedure was done. Phew, it really wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated.

He explained if the tissue he removed should come back abnormal it would be nothing life threatening and wouldn’t require anything like a mastectomy and would be completely curable.

Well, now that statement made me a little uneasy, but in reality when you find a lump isn’t that your first thought that it’s cancer?

I wasn’t thinking cancer though I thought maybe aging, menopausal; hormonal changes, or maybe the result of body changes that come along during the aging process. I wasn’t thinking cancer.

As the nurse and me were going over after care for that night and following day, the Dr peeked his head in the door asking how I felt about coming back in on the following Tuesday to discuss this further. Something tells me the Dr. knows more then what he led me to believe.

If it’s normal couldn’t they just call me, and say it’s benign? Now I’m thinking cancer!