A Little Sidetrack Along the Way

I note it has been over 2 months since I added anything to the blog. It seems blogging is becoming less and less important to everyone. This is not just me, I hear it from others also. Tweeting (for some) is the big thing. I haven’t tried that and don’t plan to. Facebook is also popular; I am on FB but I don’t add very much to it. Now it is time to update the blog. A lot – I mean a LOT -- has happened in February and March.

I must begin with what is most important to me and the closest to my heart. Here is the story. Very faithfully Joyce has gotten an annual mammogram. Even when some were/are saying every two years was satisfactory she still had hers every year. Actually it was a little over a year since her last one because of our move and house building and all. So in January she went to the clinic to submit herself to the pushing and squeezing. A couple weeks later they asked her to go in and have another one. They also asked for the ones taken in Grants Pass in past years. Ah oh. Somethun’s up.

What they saw on the new x-rays were little, tiny white dots in the left breast. They weren’t there in the Grants Pass films. This called for a biopsy. So, the middle of February she checked into the hospital for an uncomfortable little incision and a needle removal of some of those little white dots (calcium).

Now, understand. We were only mildly concerned. No worries here. Joyce has no history of breast cancer in her family. In fact she is way down low on the scale of risk factors. So this thing is going to come back negative. Right?

In the afternoon on February 21 our world fell apart. The doctor called (doctor, not nurse) to tell us the diagnosis was “ductal carcinoma in situ.” That means cancer in a tiny milk duct but it is contained within the duct. Wow! This isn’t supposed to happen. Not to us. We’re the good guys. We already have a full plate. Carcinoma IS cancer. But it’s strange how the mind processes something like this. For about three days I refused to use the ‘C’ word. I called it “growth,” “carcinoma,” or simply didn’t call it anything. Calling it cancer seemed to acknowledge it’s presence and give it a life of it’s own. But it already had a life of it’s own. Slowly, with tears and lots of  prayer, we begin to accept that this was, indeed, cancer.

Maybe this is more information than you wanted to know but the doctor explained it this way. The ducts high in the breast are microscopic. The walls of each duct are only one or two cells thick so they need to constantly replace themselves. Some of them go berserk and multiply too fast – which is what cancer is. But as they multiply they lose their source of nourishment and die turning to calcium. This is what was seen in the mammograms. Okay, end of doctor lesson.

This little abnormality needed to be removed. But if things weren’t already spiraling fast enough, now things really started to whirl. We got the biopsy report on Tuesday. Our doctor scheduled us to meet with a surgeon on Thursday. He scheduled surgery for 19 days later and asked us to see a radiology doctor and a chemotherapy doctor before surgery. These were scheduled. Then the surgery date was changed by a week – forward. Now the date was March 6. So we ran from biopsy to surgeon to radiologist to hematologist to surgery – all in two weeks. And all these places and doctors were chosen for us (which was okay because we didn’t have any better suggestions). At one point a frustrated Joyce exclaimed, “I don’t have any control. It is all happening too fast and I don’t have anything to say about it.” That was true.

The reason “they” wanted us to see all these doctors is so we would know the possibilities and be prepared. Jana came on Sunday before the surgery and stayed a week – even though it meant changing her flight dates when they changed the surgery date. And she brought Jeyanthi with her! Yeaaaa!

Here’s some more detail. The area the doctor needed to remove was so small he couldn’t see it. Just before surgery Joyce went into the mammography area and a doctor inserted a wire with a hook on it ending at the little calcium dots. He found that spot because they left a “marker” there when they did the biopsy. The hook held the wire in place and hung outside her body. Then she went to surgery. The surgeon simply (don’t you like that word, “simply”?) followed the wire to the hook, removed a sizable lump, and sewed her up. Oh… he also removed some lymph nodes. Joyce was back home by 4:30. And healing went well.

It was six days before we got the pathology report saying the doctor “got it all” and there was no sign of cancer in the lymph nodes. This means she is cancer-free. Well… as far as any cancer that can be seen. But because of this one incident, there might be another one forming (according to the doctors) so she began radiation on Tuesday, April 10. She is not really excited about it but everyone says she should do it, so has acquiesced. Since there is no cancer left, the chemo won’t be necessary.

One website says this: Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is the most common type of non-invasive breast cancer. Ductal means that the cancer starts inside the milk ducts, carcinoma refers to any cancer that begins in the skin or other tissues (including breast tissue) that cover or line the internal organs, and in situ means "in its original place." DCIS is called "non-invasive" because it hasn’t spread beyond the milk duct into any normal surrounding breast tissue. DCIS isn’t life-threatening, but having DCIS can increase the risk of developing an invasive breast cancer later on.

Note: this type of cancer cannot be discovered by self exams. It can only be found with a mammogram. By the time it would reveal itself with a lump, it would be a much, much bigger issue. So Joyce is an unofficial poster girl for annual mammograms.

Pray for her (and us) for the next 5 or 6 weeks. There will be radiation treatments 5 days a week. And this is only one of the things that happened during this time. In the next blog, I’ll continue with the “Life and Times of Gene and Joyce in February & March.”

(Sorry. No pictures. It’s a little hard to include pictures of all this – unless you want to see our local hospital).