Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
12/6/2018
In effort to share the most up to date and accurate information regarding mom’s diagnosis and treatment we asked her permission to start a Caring Bridge page on her behalf. Andy, Audrey, Ben and I would like to begin by thanking everyone for their kind words, thoughts and prayers as we begin this journey with mom.
To bring everyone up to speed, mom has been diagnosed with Stage 3 Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. A few weeks ago, during a routine mammogram a lump was detected in her left breast and she was referred to a surgeon for biopsy. The biopsy and other imaging results indicated the lump is approximately 2 inches and in fact cancerous. The cancer has also begun to spread to the lymph nodes. Mom’s cancer is considered HER2 Negative and Estrogen receptor positive. Basically, this means her cancer is the type that responds well to surgery, chemo and radiation. Her cancer type also feeds on estrogen, so hormone therapy to decrease her estrogen production can slow future growth of the cancer.
As you can imagine, the news has brought about many emotions for all of us but mom has an incredible attitude and us kids have committed to support her in anyway needed to help her navigate through this.
Last week Audrey and I accompanied her to a consultation with her surgeon and he recommended a lumpectomy with axillary lymph node dissection. Great news, no mastectomy! Today all three of us (Andy, Audrey and I) took her to her first oncology consultation to help get a full picture of what her treatment plan will be after surgery.
Before surgery a bone scan has been ordered to rule out any areas of additional concern. We are looking at mid-December for a possible surgery date but nothing will be scheduled until bone scan is done.
Once she is recovered from surgery the oncologist has recommended 3 sessions weekly of chemo for 12 weeks, followed by up to 6 weeks of radiation.
Again, I personally would like to thank all our friends and family. The upcoming months will surly present challenges we could never imagine, but the past few days have proved mom has a solid support system that will be there every step of the way.
-And in mom’s words, “let’s just get this shit over with!”
