Surgery shows promise...

Denise came out of surgery at 4:47pm, just under 4 hours. Although the doctors expected it could take up to 4 hours, the first surgeon calls me in the waiting area after two hours. The outcome is encouraging. The lump was relatively small, about 1.7cm, which is what they estimated. More importantly, the tumor was not attached to the chest muscle. They also removed the "sentinel" lymph node from under her armpit. The lymph nodes they removed showed no indication the cancer had spread. This was very good news since lymph node involvement is an important factor in determining the stage of the cancer. The sentinel nodes are the primary nodes that collect fluid that drains from the breast. If the cancer has spread to lymph nodes, it will show up in these nodes first. An initial biopsy of the lymph node was performed during surgery and this result was good, no cancer cells present. Additional tests will be done on the breast tissue and this sentinel lymph node and results will come back in about a week. There is less than a 10% chance that these additional tests will prove different than the initial biopsy performed in surgery. If the additional biopsy shows more cancer, the doctor will need to perform an additional surgery to remove more nodes. We are hopeful this will not be the case. A pathologist will also look at the tissue that was removed with the tumor to make sure that they have not missed anything. For now, we wait.

The plastic surgeon finally came into the waiting area around 4:45 and said things went very well. She had placed breast tissue expanders into the chest wall which will remain for a period of time and until all other treatments we may have to deal with are completed. This process of reconstruction could take up to 9-12 months.

Denise is resting well in her room and I should be able to provide more updates tomorrow. We appreciate all the prayers and hugs today. Good Day, Great Day!