March Was A Blur

Alternate titles considered for this entry were: “Ladies, Get A Mammogram” to “Donna Battles Breast Cancer” to “$@%&!”

February 28th Donna had her yearly female checkup.

March 1st the doctor’s office called and asked, “Can you come back in tomorrow we want to take another picture of the right breast.”

March 2nd were called into the OB/GYN’s office and told that Donna had a suspicious lump that needed to be removed.

March 7th Donna met with a surgeon to get a sonogram to help in locating the “suspicious” mass, so he would know where to aim the big fat needle to get a sample.

March 9th we spent the afternoon at the Women’s Health Center for her to have a needle biopsy.

March 14th we get the bad news from the surgeon, the mass is malignant.

March 15th Donna spends a couple aggravating hours at the hospital doing pre-surgery workup.

March 16th we spent nearly the whole day at the hospital where Donna has the lump removed. They also don’t like the looks of the sentient lymph node so the doctor removes 10 more for sampling.

March 17, 18 & 19 Donna spends in a pain pill induced fugue state.

March 20th we meet with the surgeon to remove a drain tube and he tells us that the first lymph node has some abnormal tissue that had not tested as cancer, but they weren’t sure what it was.

March 24th we meet again with the surgeon and learn that whatever was in the abnormal lymph node was left over from possibly some childhood infection and the rest of other nodes were clear.

March 28th we participate in the local BMW Susan Komen Ultimate Drive supporting breast cancer with a real purpose this time.

March 30th we meet with the oncologist where we got a cancer primer written on the tear off tissue used to protect an examining table.

This is just the outline. There were many little stories that I could have easily filled a blog post with, but held off because we have been waiting for the one appointment where we would get a definitive answer on what we are facing and develop a plan to effect a cure. Trouble is it seems like at each doctor’s visit we were presented with a new surprise. They are not totally through either, we have more tests this coming next two weeks to see if her body is up to the things the are going to throw at the disease.

The next few months will be very interesting around the Bogardus household. Because of Donna’s foresight to get a yearly mammogram, we have caught the it at an early stage, so that not only survival but preventing any return of the cancer is into the upper 90th percentile.