Career Woman

Back to work.

I went in on Monday for the first time in about a month. Ah, it was good to be back. So good, in fact, that I stayed for a looong day. I knew Rusty was going to bowling on Monday night, so there wasn't much of a reason for me to rush home. Plus, it's nice to spend some time off the couch. And I'm getting kind of sick of The Price is Right.

My manager/team lead at work is great. He's a little older than me, and he really likes beer. In fact, a lot of us at work like beer. Many people are appalled when I tell them this, but there's a pub nearby that we visit once every other week or so for lunch (and beer). The managers and even our director goes, too. At my last job my boss was a beer nazi at work. It was a different industry.

Anyway, to ease back into the week, my manager took me to lunch at the pub. Oh, it was so delicious. There was a yummy Belgian-style honey ale that is just the beer of my dreams. Aside from the beer, we also got to talk a lot about how to ease back in and feel more productive at work. It was a good lunch.

I've had no trouble with driving at all, and my muscles are feeling so good, and almost back to normal. I hope to start a post-mastectomy Pilates DVD soon. My Pilates instructor is getting it to me via a friend, so I don't have it, yet, but I'm excited about exercising again.

My dry-run for radiation is on Friday. The purpose of this appointment is to make sure that the radiation tattoos and the LAZERS line up so I'm in proper placement for the actual treatment. They'll also go over some of the skin problems I can expect and the products I can use to help.

One last thing... I realized I forgot to review the pathology report after surgery. The tumor was .8 centimeters and less around, and they got very good "clean margins" because they took so much tissue. Also, the skin that was removed was all clear. For the lymph nodes, they took 11. That number really surprised me because a lot of times I hear about 20 or so lymph nodes. Now, that could be because he only took the first "level" of nodes, or it could also be because I only had that many. Everyone has a different number of lymph nodes, and the radiation oncologist says that she likes to see anything over 10. Anyway, 3 of the 11 nodes were positive for cancer cells. Not too bad. We were really hoping for 0, but at least it wasn't 9 :-)

The pathology was a little disappointing, and I know my medical oncologist (Mr. Wizard) was also a little disappointed. It's possible that the amount of time between chemo and surgery accounted for some growth. It's also possible that it didn't shrink as much as we thought it did. Either way, it was still a good response, just not a great response. But really, .8 cm is pretty small.