Happy Birthday

Hey - It's Scott this time.  Yesterday was my birthday and also Janet's follow up with her surgeon and our first meeting with her oncologist.  As Janet said in the last entry the surgery went very well - so has her recovery.  She was out and about pretty quickly (she went to one of Andrei's basketball games on Sunday and was out running errands on Monday).  The incisions are healing nicely and Janet has great movement in her arms and shoulder with very little discomfort (she hasn't taken any pain medication - she must have some hockey player in there somewhere).

I can't say we weren't prepared to hear what we heard yesterday, it just kind of hit hard.  The tumor itself was a grade 3 and her cancer is stage 1.  Janet is HER2 positive which she'll (or me if I can catch up on my medical terminology quick) blog about in detail later (probably better than I could anyway).  The net is HER2 positive means to improve the chances of not seeing a recurrence of the cancer she should have chemotherapy.  We knew that was coming - what we didn't plan for was that the regimen they are proposing will take up to 14 months.

14 months!?!  Wasn't it just a month ago this thing popped up?  Didn't we have x-rays, ultrasounds, a biopsy and surgery like 10 minutes ago?  Shouldn't it be about over?

Well, it's not and seems it won't be for - well - 14 months or so.  The first question we had was to walk now or have chemo.  The decision to have chemo decreases substantially the chances of the cancer coming back (from like 30% down to 14%).  The other question is whether or not to join a study being done on an alternative chemo treatment (different meds and believe it or not a little longer period of time).

Janet has decided to continue treatment which means an additional test and another surgery to insert a port for the chemo.  She has not made a decision on the study.

I am sure we will post again this weekend with the details of treatment etc. but for the moment I wanted to make sure everyone was up to speed with what happened on Thursday.  Good news, bad news.  Good news, they got all the cancer and it appears not to have spread through the lymphatic system.  Bad news, we'll both celebrate birthdays before the treatments are over.  Better news - we have great support from all of you.  Your thoughts, prayers and messages have meant more than we can say - thank you.