I don't have details other than money goes to the American Cancer Society to fund research.
But YOU guys can find out all about it while I'm maybe even before I go into surgery.
What ? I'm still out in the dark?
No matter - you light up my life with your generosity and laughter and keeping me company through what can be very scary rattling around inside my thoughts.
I am so amazed and appreciative.
When I discovered a very thick area in my breast I called the doctor. The next day I was in her office. A half hour after that I was in the diagnostic radiologist's.
A full afternoon and multiple stab wounds later we had a variety of samples of malignant tentacles of tissue that were on their way to the lab.
I was in a little pain - it would increase as the local anesthetic wore off - but left his office with a soft cold pack in my bra.
To keep bleeding down & relieve pain I'd need to keep things cool. Traditional ice packs are hard and heavy. As much as I try to be a good sport I'm not into having a brick sitting on my chest.
Enter a bag of frozen peas.
I tucked it in my bra, took a picture, and was ready to tell the story later that night. That bag of peas added a touch of lightness to what could have been a sad and serious tale.
- A bag of peas was something everybody could relate to.
- Some people love them, some hate them, some use them for their own injuries.
- A bag of frozen peas was a vehicle for conversation and let people tease me instead of having to cry.
- It let people share instead of bemoaning.
I napped a lot during the first few days after the biopsy. The news was sudden and stunning after all and my body was being assaulted.
Mmmm peas for lunch?
When I fell asleep with peas in my cleavage I'd wake to the smell of freshly cooked peas. That made the story funnier, and more human. Of course I shared it because what is life but a series of stories.
After enough cooked peas I moved on to baggies with ice cubes or larger gel-packs which truth be told still are too big and too heavy to be comfy but help with pain.
The peas however live on in the form of stories from others about their use of pea-packs and the line-up of twitter avatars sporting peas in support of my struggle.
This makes them a comfort in more than one way.
And even now that they have their own grown up page at frozen pea friday they're still a simple and easy to understand symbol of caring to me.
Loic Lemeur, charming Frenchman who started the innovative video-conversation tool Seesmic sent me a link tonight, telling me to look at his blog.
Not content with added frozen Peas to his avatar on twitter the background on this edition of his video blog is now chock full of petit-pois.
I can't wait for Friday to see what the Pea Fund think-tank and tag team has planned for us as they kick start some fund raising while I take a little nap in the O.R. to start the process of kicking my own cancer.
But I'm just sayin' . . .if Loic starts speaking French to the women of the internet we may need those frozen peas to keep the temperatures down.
Invasive, sometimes called Infiltrating, is a scary word. In most cases this form of breast cancer has been present for 8–10 years when detected by a mammogram or physical exam.
In my case there was clearly an area that felt thickened or dense on December 6, 2007. A mammogram the next afternoon was not able to detect it but it clearly appeared on ultrasound and was confirmed by multiple biopsies the same day.
During those 8 to 10 years the cancer took to become apparent to me, there has been plenty of opportunity for those invasive cells to get out of the breast and spread to the rest of the body.
It is after all, by definition, an invasive form of cancer.
Each year about 190 thousand women are diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in the US and about 40 thousand women will die of the disease. The larger the mass is when discovered the more risk. Mine had tentacled almost 5cm into the surrounding tissue and two other areas in the breast were discovered as well.
My chances of living another 10 years without cancer in another area are about 40%. The likelihood of one of my other underlying health conditions doing the job before that is 20%. it took a few months to get used to that idea.
Now though my attitude is that at least I know what I'm facing. It's just not what I expected. Life changes in an instant.
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