A Good Book...with a Happy Ending

Our meeting with the Oncologist yesterday went really well. He spent over 2 hours with us answering all our questions and coming up with a treatment plan. The short version is that Michie doesn't have a very aggressive form of cancer (it's a kitten not a tiger) and will only need radiation for 6 weeks and then either tamoxifen for up to 5 years and/or removal of the ovaries depending on whether her cancer is fueled by hormones. Regardless, we are in good shape for a long and healthy future together. Whew.

When Dr. Smith sat down he said to us that reading her lab reports was like reading "a good book with a happy ending". That immediately made me cry. I am into the happy ending part.

The statistics that I am sorting out look like this:
If we did nothing else at this point she would have a 85%-90% chance of no further cancer.
With radiation it will reduce that chance (the 15-10%) from 33% to 3% for re-occurrence.
Chemo would only have a 1% chance of helping her so he doesn't suggest she do it. He said that 1% could be more effectively handled through diet and exercise.

Breast cancer is often fueled by the hormones in our bodies. They test for how much each women's specific cancer is fuel by her Estrongen (ER) and Progesterone (PR). Michie's initial test came back ER-/PR+. This is rather rare so he is going to fight with the insurance company and get a genetic test done on it to see if she really is ER-. Her PR+ was 90% positive so he is suspicious about the ER- being negative. If she was postive for both that would be a good thing since they have medicines to deal with that situation.

He isn't going to test at this point for the BRCA (genetic predisposition to Breast Cancer) since she has no family history and there is only a 1/1000 chance that she would be positive for it.

After she is done with radiation we will have follow up appointments with him every 3 months for a year. She will have MRI or Mammograms (alternating) at each of those appointments.

Next steps are setting up an appointment with the radiologist and getting approval for the ER/PR genetic test.

I am incredibly relieved and thankful that we live in a big city and have access to good health care and insurance. I know this is not true for so many women out there. I am sooooo thankful that we caught it early. Everything is going to be alright.