I’m mostly in denial at the moment – in some ways feeling the “impostor syndrome” that I felt before I had my initial diagnosis. I know there is something, but part of me is still thinking that just maybe, the biopsy will come back saying we made a mistake and there isn’t any cancer. It…

Surgery happened yesterday (Wednesday). I’m doing remarkably well today. The surgery was more involved than I anticipated. I had been thinking of it as similar to a sentinel node dissection, but it was closer to a lumpectomy. What do I mean by that? The incision was bigger (she went in the original incision but had…

My anxiety levels are starting to increase, and will likely ratchet up during the week. One thing that is causing me the increase in anxiety is the lack of information coming from my surgeon’s office. I don’t feel like they have a whole lot of empathy for what I might be going through. There are…

Yesterday was a day of breakdowns. It started with a phone call from my family doctor’s nurse. She was giving me an update on something totally unrelated to cancer, but all I wanted was the results of my bone scan. She confirmed that the results were in but could not give them to me until…

I woke up on early Saturday morning from a stress dream. I dreamed about learning more about the surgery and it not being what I expected. What I remember most from the dream was that I was expecting a 2-hour surgery and they said it was going to be a 9-hour surgery. Upon waking, I…

I met with the local surgeon for my first consult. I wasn’t sure what kind of biopsy we would be doing. She informed me that we are treating this like a local recurrence of breast cancer. That is most likely what we are dealing with, so the initial treatment plan is based on that. In…

I am surprised at how calm I am – how I’m not totally stressed out or in panic mode. It is so different from the last time. I found out on Thursday that the swollen lymph node in my right axilla is cancer. We don’t know yet what type of cancer, we just know that…