"Everybody gets a humpback whale!"

I'm back from a good visit back east with the family. It was great to catch up with my mom and sister. I even had a chance to spend some time with my cute little three year old niece. She is a funny little one! Her favorite joke is to channel Dane Cook as Oprah..."Everybody gets a humpback whale!" She thinks she's pretty funny and she's right!

So Keith and I went to see the surgeon today to hear about the results of my MRI. MRI's are more precise than the PET/CT scan I had early in July. The point of this MRI was to check on the cancer in my breast so we can decide whether or not I need surgery. According to the MRI there are still three tiny little spots of cancer (about the size of pinheads) in my right breast. This isn't surprising, but even so it isn't what we wanted to hear. It is still unclear whether or not I will have surgery (and this drives me crazy!!). The surgeon will talk it over with my oncologist and we'll take it from there. There is no definitive evidence that removing the primary tumor is helpful once the cancer has spread and in fact leaving it in makes it easier to monitor how effective treatment is. It would be pretty major surgery to have if it doesn't actually help anything..... such a sticky widget. My prediction is that I won't have the surgery right away and we'll wait six months (when I'll have another MRI) and see where we stand. Hopefully the Herceptin will wipe out all the tiny bits that are still left and if not then maybe I'll push for surgery...

We also discussed the impending need for an oophorectomy (removal of my ovaries and fallopian tubes). The fact that I have a BRCA mutation means that I have a 20% chance of getting ovarian cancer. So sometime in the next year or so I'll get that done. It shouldn't be too bad. It's done laparoscopically and the surgeon says it takes only a couple days to recover. I'm hoping to put it off for a couple months anyway...

The reality is that overall I'm still doing better than expected given my starting point back in February.