Been there, done that!

No pics today, just update. Go to Sandy's blog for the inside story: sfeutz.blogspot.com.

You'll see this there, as well as here:

Dear All,

Without getting too Rumsfeldian, I'll just say it's a relief to have the fog of uncertainty parted at least a little and have the way ahead clearer.

We did our initial Mayo thing yesterday afternoon. Everyone was wonderfully gracious, helpful and on the same team, which is reassuring in itself. The key contact was, of course, the surgical oncologist (or is he an oncological surgeon?) Dr. Nabil Wasif. Pleasant, easy-to-understand and very good at laying out the situation. The initial meeting led to a hurry-up mammogram, which we were then able to discuss with him about an hour later and lay out what will happen next.

The point of the mammogram was to clear up his questions about what else may be in there besides the marginal cancer at the 6 o'clock and 9 o'clock margins of the sample removed in Silver City. Yesterday's views shows that there is calcification at each end of that sample that needs to be addressed, too. There is also the question of checking the nearby "sentinel lymph nodes" to see if there is any indication of the cancer spreading.

So, we are on track for Sandy to have a lumpectomy at the Mayo Hospital in Phoenix sometime Wednesday. Some preliminary steps will have to be taken the day before at the Scottsdale Clinic; we're also not sure of the timing on that. We're to be called Monday with the exact schedule. That leaves us a little uncertain as to how to play the next few days, but we've pretty much decided to stay in AZ, rather than trekking back and forth to Silver City. We came prepared to stay into next week and we'd rather be closer than five hours away. Today will be zoo day!

I think Dr. Wasif was very good about laying out options and risks. While this is not something there can be guarantees about, he was very clear that Sandy's chances are very good ... the lumpectomy has a good chance of taking care of the problem, and it leaves mastectomy as a fallback procedure if necessary. As I understand it, the lumpectomy will have to be followed by both radiation treatment and chemotherapy, but he was confident that both of those can be handled at the Cancer Center in Silver City.

In the end, both of us are glad we came to the Mayo and reassured that Sandy is in good hands!