What a difference a day makes

Something happened yesterday. I don't know for sure what it was, but it has made a big difference for me. I snapped out of a depression I didn't know I was in. I think it was a combination of things. The nurse in the plastic surgeon's office Tuesday night was actually an angel. That's where it started. Then I met two other angels yesterday - one was Kaiser's breast cancer program coordinator and the other was Ann, one of Kaiser's survivor/volunteers. If you're looking for angels, there are apparently a lot of them working for Kaiser Permanente in San Diego.

Anyway, I'm feeling much better about things - less overwhelmed and more confident in my ability to make the decisions I have to make. Breast cancer and its treatment are very complicated. It's great to have so many treatment options, but it's almost too many. At least it seems that way when you've just been told you have cancer.

At any rate, I learned that plastic surgery is no cake walk and the decision to go that route is based on a number of medical and personal issues. Lumpectomy with radiation presents its own issues. And the fact is, until surgery - whatever kind - we won't know the true size of the tumor and how much tissue must be removed, nor will we know whether lymph nodes are involved. And if they are, additional surgery to remove lymph nodes would be required. I wish there were a way to know that ahead of time, but Kaiser will only perform the lymph node biopsy at the time of the lumpectomy/mastecomy operation. Results of the biopsy take up to a week.

In light of this information, I have decided to go to a quilt show tomorrow - the largest show in California - with a couple of close friends. I am leaning toward lumpectomy with radiation, but expect to have a final decision made this weekend. I want to get the surgery/biopsy over with so that I can move on to whatever comes next.