Happy Wednesday - let me start by saying GOD IS GOOD!  We have been waiting to post an update until we met with my Mayo Oncologist this past Friday.  My final pathology report came back with a Pathological Complete Response.  Best news we could have hoped for.  We thought they ended up taking 4 lymph nodes out to test but it ended up being a total of 7.  One of them ended up being a cluster for 4 small ones.  6 of them came back negative and the 1 that tested positive in the beginning had a .1mm isolated tumor cell....they now classify me as NODE NEGATIVE!! My left breast tissue had precancerous cells just like Mark reported before.  This is called DCIS - again STAGE 0 NOW!!!  Oncologist told me my prognosis is good :)  They can't guarantee this can never come back but we all know life is never guaranteed.  However, my chance of it coming back is low.  

The hard part of this journey is coming to an end but my journey is not over yet.  I have my thyroid surgery scheduled for June 28th, again up at Mayo Clinic.  This will come with an overnight hospital stay.  When they found my nodule in the very beginning they gave me a biopsy in Des Moines and a repeat biopsy at Mayo.  Both came back atypical cells.  This means they have no clue if it is thyroid cancer or not - UGH!  I have a 30-50% chance of it being that yucky C word.  I ask all of you to start your prayers now that when they take out the nodule that it shows no signs of cancer, and that it is just a nodule.  This surgery will be 1.5-2 hours.  That sounds so much better than the 4-8 hour breast surgery.  The recovery from this surgery is a lot faster too - one week vs six weeks.

After that radiation will start.  I won't be able to start radiation until I am fully expanded, plus I have to wait until at least 2 weeks after my thyroid surgery to let my incision heal.  Radiation will be for 5 weeks.   After that I will be all done for 2018!! I will have 2 additional surgeries in 2019.  One will be for implant exchange - taking out these not so comfortable expanders & replacing it for the actual implant.  The second one will be to take out ovaries with a possible full hysterectomy.  The reason I will have to do that is because of my BRCA mutation.  That genetic mutation increases your risk of breast and ovarian cancer.  Ovarian cancer is almost impossible to detect and I am already have two sweet little girls so no need for ovaries anymore.