follow up with dr. j, a new lump and some relief...

trish has been doing really great with her recovery. with each day, she is becoming less sore and more active. for the first time since surgery, trish was able to bring caden to his nursery school by herself this morning.

i think it was a big mental boost for both trish and the little guy. she is able to do more independently each day, and for caden to see his mama at school really made his day and he seemed a little bit more chipper today than he has over the past few weeks. after school the three of us hit up the newly remodeled costco in redwood city, and then it was time for trish and i to head back to the stanford cancer center.

today we had a follow up appointment with trish's surgical oncologist, dr. stephanie jeffrey. dr. j was very pleased and surprised at how quickly trish is healing up. the incisions have all closed up nicely, and we took the last of trish's tape sutures off a few days ago. dr. jeffrey also had some good news for us, the final pathology of trish's mastectomy was back, and there was no signs of cancer (not that we expected any different, but its always nice to get some good news).

so... earlier in the week trish discovered a new lump in her abdomen.

trish asked dr. jeffrey to have a feel to see what she thought. after examining trish, dr. jeffrey believed the lump to probably be a lipoma (benign fatty tissue). but dr. j then said, with trish's history of cancer, she wanted to order an immediate biopsy.

back on the emotional roller coaster we go...

as we were waiting for the biopsy team to arrive, trish and i somewhat joked about our lives and if things aren't hectic, they aren't normal. but the reality of it, the waiting, the wondering... its stressful and wears on you.
you wonder how a body that has been hammered by months of chemo and radiation could produce a new lump. and you wait some more.

you try not to worry about anything until there is something to worry about. this sounds great on paper, but its much easier said than done. luckily for us today the wait was minimal. it wasn't an over the weekend wait like trish's first biopsy last year. the biopsy team arrived about 10 minutes after dr. j. called them. the team of three quickly set up and took two needle aspiration biopsies of trish's lump, and told us they would be back in 5 minutes with the preliminary results as soon as they took a gander of the specimen cells under a microscope.

so... we waited and we wondered.

it was only a few minutes, but it felt like a few hours. the biopsy team arrived back with the news...

everything looked normal.

they believed it was a lipoma, just had dr. jeffrey initially thought. the biopsy team took one more needle biopsy (third overall) to be sent off to the lab for final pathology, but from what they saw in the first two samples, all signs pointed to benign fatty tissue (not that we expected any different, but its always nice to get some good news).


just another hectic (normal) day... thanks for checking in