My sister & I took a trip up to Portland today to visit the surgical oncologist who removed my lymph nodes the last time. It’s always a good idea to start days that will include stressful doctor’s visits with espresso. My sister was wonderful to stop and get me a mocha before meeting up at the library.
At my appointment Dr. Vetto checked on my progress and took a look at this stubborn lymph node that insists on being larger than the last ultrasound of it. January 5th it was almost completely round, about ½ cm and looked to be benign. My medical oncologist thought last week it had roughly doubled in size and the ultrasound today confirmed it at about 1 cm.
Oncology as a field is not a precise science, as I discover more and more to my chagrin, not because doctors don’t study the heck out of cancer, but because they just don’t know enough about why some cancers spread and others don’t and what to do about it. We talked a lot about my chances of having a local reoccurrence and the risks of surgery. Because I had previous surgery and then radiation to the area there is a lot of scar tissue in my arm pit and the skin has thinned, common side effects. Dr. Vetto thought my risk of having a local reoccurrence, of having this lump be cancer, was about 5% (most of the time if my kind of cancer comes back, it comes back as distant metastases) which was very encouraging. My risk of having the skin be too thin to close correctly if we took the lymph node out was higher than that.
We settled on an ultrasound guided needle biopsy, if the radiologist could find a mass and not just scar tissue. Dr. Vetto, who has a great sense of humor, decided to see if the ultrasound tech and radiologist could find a mass if he didn’t specify the area at all. They could definitely find the lymph node, at 1 cm it is hard to miss, but we not sure if what I am feeling is that node or if I am feeling the scar tissue, under the skin but on top of the lymph node. The node, though large, looked to be completely benign and we actually decided it looked good enough to not do the biopsy and risk damaging the area (or nicking the large artery sitting right next to it).
Of course, this puts me back in the watch it and wait game, and they don’t have any idea why my arm and armpit is hurting so much. I started getting some edema in my chest and upper arm again which causes pain and my hand has some numbness off and on. I meet with Dr. Vetto again next week to see how things are doing. It is exhausting to spend the day at OHSU (I left at 7am and got home around 3:30pm), but at least I am back in the “No Evidence of Disease” category.
At my appointment Dr. Vetto checked on my progress and took a look at this stubborn lymph node that insists on being larger than the last ultrasound of it. January 5th it was almost completely round, about ½ cm and looked to be benign. My medical oncologist thought last week it had roughly doubled in size and the ultrasound today confirmed it at about 1 cm.
Oncology as a field is not a precise science, as I discover more and more to my chagrin, not because doctors don’t study the heck out of cancer, but because they just don’t know enough about why some cancers spread and others don’t and what to do about it. We talked a lot about my chances of having a local reoccurrence and the risks of surgery. Because I had previous surgery and then radiation to the area there is a lot of scar tissue in my arm pit and the skin has thinned, common side effects. Dr. Vetto thought my risk of having a local reoccurrence, of having this lump be cancer, was about 5% (most of the time if my kind of cancer comes back, it comes back as distant metastases) which was very encouraging. My risk of having the skin be too thin to close correctly if we took the lymph node out was higher than that.
We settled on an ultrasound guided needle biopsy, if the radiologist could find a mass and not just scar tissue. Dr. Vetto, who has a great sense of humor, decided to see if the ultrasound tech and radiologist could find a mass if he didn’t specify the area at all. They could definitely find the lymph node, at 1 cm it is hard to miss, but we not sure if what I am feeling is that node or if I am feeling the scar tissue, under the skin but on top of the lymph node. The node, though large, looked to be completely benign and we actually decided it looked good enough to not do the biopsy and risk damaging the area (or nicking the large artery sitting right next to it).
Of course, this puts me back in the watch it and wait game, and they don’t have any idea why my arm and armpit is hurting so much. I started getting some edema in my chest and upper arm again which causes pain and my hand has some numbness off and on. I meet with Dr. Vetto again next week to see how things are doing. It is exhausting to spend the day at OHSU (I left at 7am and got home around 3:30pm), but at least I am back in the “No Evidence of Disease” category.
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