The first step in the treatment process is a surgery on 10/31 (so much for Halloween being my favorite holiday...and this means cancelling the Yusko's annual Halloween party. My daughter will be crushed!). This will be a pretty invasive surgery, and will hopefully remove all the cancer they can see and also determine whether it is in my lymph nodes and/or has started to spread elsewhere. This surgery will determine the next course of treatment: if it has spread, then there will be chemo (for how long, I still don't know), followed by 7 weeks of radiation. If it has not spread, then there will be 7 weeks of radiation, 5 days/week (this is the option that I'm rooting for!)
I anticipate that I will be out of school from Halloween through Thanksgiving. After the surgery, there is a 6 week period before any treatment can start, so whatever the next step is, won't happen until New Years. Best case scenario, I will be out for 2-3 weeks before Thanksgiving, at school in December, and out in January and February.
After chemo/radiation/both, I will have to take Tamoxifin (sp?) for about 5 years, and have an MRI and a mammogram every 6 months (good times...you're jealous, I know). The thinking now is that if all goes well, a mastectomy will not be in the picture, though the surgeon did recommend it. I'm opting out at this point in the process.
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