Great news today

We met with the oncologist today, Dr Barreau, who we loved! He was able to get the Pathology report. It's great news. Dr Manders removed 20 lymph nodes and they only found cancer in the one lymph node that we had known about from the beginning. No cancer in any of the other 19 lymph nodes!!!! He also said that there were clear margins around the area removed from her breast. The tumor in her breast was 3.2 CM

I must say that I just about started to cry. Then he told us the Grade of the cancer. For those who don't know, Grading is different from staging.

Grading is how aggressive the cancer is.

Staging is

The stage of a cancer is a descriptor (usually numbers I to IV) of how much the cancer has spread. The stage often takes into account the size of a tumor, how deeply it has penetrated, whether it has invaded adjacent organs, how many lymph nodes it has metastasized to (if any), and whether it has spread to distant organs. Staging of cancer is important because the stage at diagnosis is the most powerful predictor of survival, and treatments are often changed based on the stage.

Michelle's cancer was a Grade 3 which means that it was very aggressive. Which also means it can grow and spread quickly. This explains why nothing showed up on Michelle's Mammogram last year. It might sound scary, but thankfully Michelle found it early.

So what happens next? Michelle has her first Chemo Appt on March 23. There are going to be four rounds of treatment every two weeks for the first drug, Adriamycin.

More about adriamycin here http://www.chemocare.com/bio/adriamycin.asp

Then another 4 rounds of treatment every two weeks with Taxol.

More about Taxol here http://www.chemocare.com/bio/taxol.asp

So now we start the long process of recovery. Michelle continues to get stronger everyday. We meet with the Dr Manders tomorrow and hopefully the drain can be removed.

Thanks again to everyone for their support. We can't begin to tell you how much it means to us.

Howard