March 5, 2010
Everyone is pretty confident that I have a small mass that can be removed. Oh, but it's protocol to remove the sentinel node to see if any cancer cells have moved out of the tumor. Gosh! This is all starting to sound more complicated.
The lymphatic system is the sewage system for cellular waste in the body. The sentinel node is the first one out of the breast. If that is clean, then you get sewn up and on to radiation. If it isn't clean, then the surgeon moves down the lymph node line until they come up with clean ones.
So hoping for clean lymph nodes, Peter and I set off for the hospital on a bright sunny morning. In short order I was stripped, weighed and measured, wheelchaired and sent back to the MRI machine to have a wire poked into the tumor. Being face down and under strict instructions not to move, I have no idea how they did it, but when I emerged from my tube, I had a 10 inch wire sticking out of me!
Next we dashed off to Nuclear Medicine to inject radioactive dye to located the sentinel node (4 painful shots around the nipple....... little pinch, my foot!), then back at a clip to get some mammograms for another wire to mark something else. Dear Reader..... try to imagine not one mammogram, but 10 of them with wires going in and coming out as they looked for the spot. They'd strapped me into a highchair so I couldn't even make a run for it. Then to top it off, the the nurses just wanted to talk about my curly hair and interior design. Guess it was a distraction!
What a morning! It was a relief to get trundled into the OR and put to sleep!
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