Aiaiai......as my mother would say....

March 11, 2010
Later that day, Dr Ward called with the results. You guessed it.... another good news, bad news conversation.

I go into a zone with this sort of stuff. Good old British stiff upper lip and all that. So the good news was that my lobular wasn't too big, and she'd got good clean margins. The bad news was that she'd taken seven lymph nodes and two were positive.

When you hear this type of thing, your mind goes blank. "Oh, hello. How are you Dr. Ward? Yes, thanks for calling. Yes, I'm fine. Never felt better. Oh, positive lymph nodes. Right. Great! I see. Well, is that a big problem or just a little problem? Biggish problem? " I really admire her for being able to do a job where she has to give people scary news. I can't say enough good things about her -- even though she was on one of her 'bad news' days.

"I'm afraid you might have to have chemotherapy". Wow! That seemed slightly harsh, but I took it in stride and decided to think about it later. In the meantime, I needed to know how to get a team organized to tackle this latest development! I needed an oncologist and an oncology radiologist. Back to the girlfriends.....