Kate MacQueen

Short story: I had breast cancer, had an operation on May 19 which removed all of it and two clear lymph nodes. 

Longer story: In February I went to see my doctor because my right nipple was looking cracked and dry. An ultrasound, followed by a needle biopsy, followed by an MRI resulted in a diagnosis of DCIS. That's good news since the cells are restricted to the ducts and it is called pre-cancer. I scheduled surgery to remove ducts and a couple of lymph nodes on May 19. Clear margins and no cancer in the lymph nodes. Good news again. The bad news is that there was a micro-invasion of some of the cells into the rest of my breast tissue and the cells were HER2neu positive, meaning aggressive among other things, and not hormone receptive. Now they are calling it stage 1. That lead ultimately to a decision that I should undergo a treatment of chemo therapy, followed by radiation. I'll get two drugs once a week for 12 weeks. Then one of the injected drugs every three weeks for a year. More details are in the journal entries below.