October 3, 2006: Dude, Where’s My Cancer?

So… the pathology report is in, although apparently we needn’t have bothered. The samples of breast tissue taken from the lumpectapalooza site — you know, that pesky spot where there was all that cancer stuff before? — showed ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. No cancer at all.  At ALL.  Well, it’s possible that there are a few lonely little cancer cells wandering around in there — “Hello? Hellooooo? Hey you guys? No kidding, this isn’t funny guys!” — but the path report shows quite clearly that there are no rallies, barbeques, or other hoppin’ social events going on there.

So what about the lymph nodes?  Well what about the lymph nodes, they’d like to know, as all thirteen of them stand there, hands on hips, tapping their lymphy little toes in irritation.  You yanked all of us out of there and did you find any cancer in any of us?  No you did not: not one bit of cancer in any one of us.  Healthy as horses we are, but can you put us back in there, oh noooooo…

So what about the liver?  And what about the hip bones?  Well, we don’t really know.  As TFDB said earlier, doing a scan of Stacey’s hip wouldn’t really tell us anything because it would show damaged bone: because bone heals so slowly, it would look the same whether it was healing or deteriorating.  For the diagnosis there, they generally go by the level of pain the bone-owner is having, and Stacey is having none.  Which is good news.

I don’t really have a clear idea about what the next steps are for the liver — I need to check with Stacey whether they’re going to do a separate scan of that (although she has probably told me already and I don’t remember…)  but I do know that there is no swelling and no pain, and that Stacey’s liver function is completely normal (as it has been all along) so all that can be nothing but good.

So, what happened?  Well, I think that’s pretty clear… Stacey kicked the soup out of it and threw it off the porch.  And no, she’s not done with it — there will be more treatment, including radiation therapy to kill off the ronin cells, and hormone therapy basically forever, and who knows what all else.  And Stacey’s Sister still has quite the bone to pick with IBC, thank you very much.  And we all know that it might come back.

But we don’t want to think about that today.  Today is absolutely the perfect weather for such news — bright and sunny and 80 here in Massachusetts, “unseasonably warm” they like to call it.  So everybody go out and play, jump up and down, make up a little song called “Stacey Rocks!”

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