The Battle Continues...

Good Evening Everyone, Scott here. I know that this will disappoint many of you, as my writing/blogging skills are no where near Liz's caliber, but I am filling in as a ghost writer for the day. Don't worry, everything is fine with Liz. She is just a little tired after another long day and asked me to fill in for her. So here is goes...

Oh, wait, before I get into today's events, I need to share something. I was pissed yesterday. Actually, that is an understatement. I was more than ready to wallop someone for making Liz go through another procedure. While she is extremely strong, and doing very well (all things considered), I hate to see her in pain. I couldn't comprehend how one has a mastectomy, gets the pathology report back that says there are clean margins, and then get a call saying there may be some more breast cancer in there. ISN'T THE POINT OF A MASTECTOMY IS THAT THERE IS NO MORE BREAST TISSUE?!?! Thankfully for everyone at St. John's Hospital and the Maplewood Surgery Center, I had a day to calm down (complaining to several of you also helped - so thanks to those of you that had to suffer through my tirade yesterday).

OK, on to today's events. We started the day at the Breast Center at St. John's hospital where the head of the Radiology Department performed the ultrasound on Liz. Almost immediately, she was able to locate the infamous "missing marker" from the day before. She gave Liz a quick little spiel about how she needed to insert a guide wire into her breast and there was a possibility that she might puncture the implant (thanks for calming her nerves Doc).

From there, we went to the surgery center where Liz's surgeon talked to us about what was going to happen (and continue to "calm" our fears by telling us there was only a 10% chance that she was going to puncture the implant). Before the surgery, she went back to the Pathology Department to review the breast tissue from last week and the location of the tumor they identified. If I heard the surgeon correctly (which it is entirely possible I did not), she feels that the tumor from last week was in a different location than the marker they placed during the original biopsy. I interpret that to mean that there were in fact two tumors. The location of the original tumor was in the sub-cutaneous tissue near the bottom of Liz's breast - in her chest wall really (this is the one the surgeon went after today). The one the pathologist found last week was in a totally different location and never showed up in any of the 75 ultrasounds, 23 MRIs, 81 mammograms, or 52 gamma-scans Liz has had over the last 7 months. We won't really be able to confirm the number of tumors until after the final pathology report.

After surgery, the surgeon told us that she had to take a little skin and tissue down to the implant (we said a little prayer of thanks before dinner tonight thanking God for making today an implant puncture free day). We now have to wait until the pathologist can review this specimen to ensure that there are clean margins around it. We hope to get those results back this week, but we may not hear until next week. We are praying everything comes back clean...