We met with the surgeon yesterday for the post op check up. I am healing nicely and my recovery is right on track, she was not concerned with anything. She replaced the surgical tape over my stitches with new surgical tape, which can be removed in one week. The stitches themselves will disolve on their own. I was cleared to lift more than 5 lbs with my right arm and can finally stop sleeping at a 30-45 degree angle on my back. I slept like a baby on my left side last night :) I can resume aerobic activity in 2 weeks.
We went over the pathology report (which we already knew most of it) and discussed why she removed 3 additional lymph nodes (they were right there when she found the Sentinal Lymph Node for the biopsy so decided to take those additional 3 as well which would lower the chance of false negative results). The tumor size was 2.5cm (a little bigger than we thought) which puts me at Stage IIa (very early stage two).
The additional news from the pathology report that we did not know about from her voicemail last week is that there was "no angiolymphatic invasion identified" which is GREAT. Cancer cells can be detected as "crawling" into or towards the bloodstream. None detected means no activity was detected which would mean it appears the cancer cells have stayed contained within the tumor area. This is significant since my tumor was listed at a grade 3 - which is the kind that like to get out. And it appears it did not try to get out, but stayed contained in one site. GOOD STUFF
We also discussed chemo briefly. I am in that gray area....I am luckily not at high risk (it does not seem like cancer has gotten out) but I am not low risk where chemo would not be necessary. We looked at the statistics again and Dr. Langer quietly said "If I were in your shoes, I would get it". So we will continue down that path towards chemo...
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