Friday Appointments - Good news...Bad News..

First the good news - uterus biopsy came back fine...just waiting to look over ultrasound.

The afternoon appt. with the 2nd Oncologist was horrible. He was running over an hour late and did not have a good bed side manner at all. He was older and yet my first impression was that he had never read a path report before. He kept shuffling the reports and saying that they were very unorganized. Once we got through the history he told me that my report showed that I was Her2- status. I didn't bring this up from the other appt. because Dr. B said that I was Her2+. This positive or negative status is pretty complicated but (-) typically means that the cancer is more aggressive, doesn't respond as well to treatments like chemo, and has a higher risk for recurrence. When he told me I was negative I told him I was confused because Dr. B had told us I was positive status. He looked back over the report and said that it was negative. He went on to say that he recommended 4 rounds of chemo given every three weeks. After those 3 months of treatments I would go to the clinic every week for an injection of Taxol and this would last for 3 months. I would then take Herceptin for 1 year, this is not chemo but it is given through IV...it would be 52 weekly treatments....after that I would move on to Tamoxifen for 5 years. He thought mastectomy would be a good idea for the breast with cancer and just didn't want to talk about both...If I do mastectomy it would be after the first 6 months of treatments. If you read the Wednesday blog you will see that this is a VERY different approach compared to what Dr. B suggested. I was shocked by all of this and very upset because I knew from my research that Her2 - status is not good. I just wanted to run out and get away from this guy with the horrible breath and terrible bed side manner. He wanted to have some blood drawn for lab work and he also ordered PET scan, bone scan and something called a MUGGA (I think)....most of them will be looking for cancer in other areas such as bone, brain, etc. He wants me to come back on the 9th and start chemo on the 16th of October at the latest.

I was a wreck when we left....I just could not believe that two docs read the report two different ways. Bret decided to have Dr. K. (surgeon) paged to see if he could help. He called back within a few minutes and said that he would call the hospital in the morning and see if he could find someone to read the report to him and call us back.

Needless to say, I have been a wreck all evening. I know I should not let this get me down until we know for sure what the results are but I have just been feeling so positive about beating this thing since we met with Dr. B.

I am praying that this guy read the report wrong but you would hope that someone that makes $250,000.00 a year would be able to read a pathology report. 18 months of treatment is a long time and all except for the tamoxifen seem to have some pretty rough side effects. I need to stop reading about any of this until we know more.

We are leaving for Crawfordsville in the morning so I may not have a chance to update this until Sunday evening. Sorry for not wanting to talk on the phone tonight but I am just so tired of this whole thing and too emotional to talk to anyone......

Please say a prayer for us....