The last couple of days have been full of good news!  Throughout these months I've been telling myself not to get too high or too low, just even keeled.  Although the Goodness of these days has been Great, it is tempered by the knowledge that in one week things are going to get much more difficult.  Even keeled.

My last post was pretty short, but got the point across.  Even though I was really tired at the time of that post, I thought it was important to communicate that information!  We had an followup appointment with Dr. Manders today that confirmed, indeed, that all of Cathy's lymph nodes were negative for cancer.  Dr. Manders thought she took out 6 lymph nodes, but it turned out that one of the nodes was actually four little tiny nodes clumped together.  That means that 9 lymph nodes were clear!  No cancer in the lymph nodes means no radiation.  No radiation means reconstruction at the time of mastectomy.  Reconstruction at the time of mastectomy means a shorter road to recovery.

All this talk of mastectomy and reconstruction points to the appointment we had with Dr. Butterfield, the plastic surgeon, yesterday.  Dr. Butterfield has apparently been told of the node pathology because she greeted us with, "So, good news!"  We talked through the reconstruction and learned a little more about the drains, the expanders, the recovery time, and other details.  We were excited that we could talk about Plan A, because there was to be no radiation.  Dr. Butterfield told us that Dr. Manders would take about two hours, then she would come in for another hour and a half to two hours.  We were thankful that there wouldn't be a longer time of anesthesia.

On the way home we talked about our conversation with Dr. Butterfield.  The surgery time seemed short to both of us when considering all the work she had to do with the latissimus flaps and the reconstruction.  Dr. Butterfield had also talked about expanders and I told Cathy that I didn't remember expanders being necessary in an LD flap reconstruction.  We were both beginning to feel a little confused.  I asked Cathy to call today to make sure that LD flaps were still the plan - so we're all on the same page.

Cathy called and Dr. Butterfield told her that LD flaps were her radiation plan!  She thought LD flaps would be important for a good result to compensate for the damage that radiation would cause the tissue.  Given Cathy's healthy body and having plenty of skin, she said that expander and implant reconstruction would be much preferable to LD flap reconstruction.  Thus, the shorter surgery time AND Cathy is super excited about not having two surgery sites to heal!

Lots of good news, but still a hard road ahead.  Cathy is tough.  Good news item #3 - peach fuzz.