Happy St Paddy's Day!

What a day it has been. I had to meet my friend Judy at 7:15 so we could get to Fargo in plenty of time for my appointment this morning. Somehow I managed to do everything except set my alarm last night - I had my iPod all plugged in, alarm ap open with the correct wake up time showing. Everything all set except for the part where I should have changed it from "off" to "on". So I woke up at about 6:50. Luckily all those years of getting ready for school in 5 minutes flat left me with lifelong skills when it comes to getting ready fast. Having almost no hair doesn't hurt in these situations either. I had the pets fed and was out the door at 7:03, grabbed a crappy breakfast and some coffee at the gas station and picked up Judy at 7:15 sharp.

The appointment with the surgeon was awesome. I was so nervous about getting pressured to do more surgery than I wanted, but that did not happen at all. In fact the Doc agreed that my concerns were reasonable, and that the lymph node surgery would not affect my chances of survival. He said that although doing the lymph node dissection is the standard procedure, deciding not to do it is a valid choice and he didn't pressure me at all to go ahead with it. And he ordered more tests so that we will have as much information as possible before making the final decision. You could have knocked me over with a feather, as they say, I never expected this to go so well. So next week I will get a mammogram (and possibly an ultrasound) to see what, if anything, is left of the breast tumor, followed by another PET scan to find out if there is any activity in the lymph nodes. The PET can't pick up very small areas of cancer, but it's the bigger areas that we would need to be worried about. The radiation therapy should be able to knock out small bits that are left. As it stands right now I have the lumpectomy scheduled for March 30, and if the tests show anything bad going it we may change the plan and opt for more extensive surgery after all. It seems that nothing is ever certain in this cancer journey until it over.

I also had blood work done today to make sure I have bounced back from the chemo and everything looked good with that. My liver enzymes are finally back in the normal range, so I could even be out drinking green beer right now, if I was still into that kind of thing. A glass of wine sounds better, but I had to rush off to dog obedience class instead. Maybe tomorrow!

And the final bit of good news for the day - we have a patch of green grass in the front yard! Surrounded by large piles of snow, but it's a start, at least.