The Day It Really Hit Home 11-14-06

I went for my appointment yesterday 11-14-07 with Dr. Alison Laidley, a breast cancer surgeon and know a little more than we did. I am scheduled today for a PET scan where you drink glucose and then they do a scan on you to see if the cancer has spread any where else in the body. That will take 4 hours for the whole process. I’m scheduled for an MRI tomorrow at 11:30. The results of these 2 scans will give Dr. Laidley more information as to the strength and type of treatment.

Dr. Laidley did an ultrasound right in the exam room, so she could see the tumors herself and compare them to the films she got from Lake Pointe Medical Center. We had been scheduled in at her office as her last appointment of the day. She had me get dressed and then took us into her office to sit down. She explained the size and type of cancer that I have, she drew pictures to explain the options. What we weren't prepared for was when she said, "I think we can save your life, but it's going to be a long, tough year." That was a shocker! The first thing I thought of and it came out of my mouth was, "Well, just take it out now!" She put down her pen and looked straight at me and said, "Do you want to lose your breast?" I lowered my head and said "No" and David reached up and touched my shoulder and told her that we had already talked about this, but that I was just upset and I didn't mean that. She was hoping that we might be able to save the breast, but could give no assurance of that.

Dr. Laidley said she is going to be very aggressive with my treatment because of the size of the 2 tumors and how fast it has grown in such a short time. She will start me on chemotherapy next week to arrest the cancer growth and hopefully shrink the tumors and if there is cancer any where else, it will stop that also. She wouldn’t even talk about surgery of any kind at this point because of the size and rapid growth. I would have to take the chemo anyway, and doing it first gives a better chance of a successful surgery later. We will start with the chemo, then do radiation and there is also a new drug called Herceptin that has been successful in attacking the rapid cell growth on the type of cancer I have.

Thanks for all the prayers and hugs and encouragement. We’ve got a fight ahead of us----and fight, it’s gonna be.

The First Email After the Diagnosis

Your breast buddy. I love that! How awesome is it that we can share this experience together and grow even closer. God tells us we are never alone because He is always with us and even better He gave us each other to go through it together. I love you !!!!!!!
Peggy
----- Original Message -----
From: Vickie L Smith
To: Peggy & Tommy Swaringen
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 8:46 PM
Subject: Your Twin

Thank you so much for the phone call tonight! I thought about you today and how much I appreciate your spirit and concern for me yesterday. Here you are going through the same thing and you were comforting me. What a best friend! I love you so much and admire you for the way you love people unconditionally and how you give and give and give.

Your breast buddy,

Vickie Lynn

Biopsy Results - IDC

I had still heard nothing from the doctor's office, so I called back around 10 a.m. The nurse told me that she saw the report on Dr. Gillean's desk, but that the doctor was the only one who could tell you what was in the report. Ping.

Dr. Gillean called me at 1:20. When my cell phone rang, I went into the office supply room across from my cubicle at work and sat on the step stool in there to talk to her. She told me that the preliminary results of the biopsy indicated cancer, I asked her what kind and she said it was probably invasive ductal carcinoma and was in a milk duct. She apologized and said she was so sorry, that she was so surprised since we had just done the mammogram 5-2-06 and it was clean. She told me that her office would be calling me back to set an appointment with a breast surgeon. I was crying and shocked and scared.

I grabbed my security badge and left the building to go outside so I could call David. I sat on a bench outside and just cried. I tried and tried to call David, but he was in a meeting. He finally called me back and I just cried more. He told me to go home, asked if he needed to come pick me up, no I could get home. This meant I had to go in and tell Gabe, my boss, what I had found out. I turned off my computer, got my purse and went into Gabe's office and told him I needed to go home and what the results were. Bless his heart, he apologized and told me to go home.

On the way home Dr. Gillean's office called me back with my appointment for the breast surgeon. I was crying, so I asked her to wait for me to pull over. I pulled over in the parking lot of a building at IH 635 and Forest Lane. It took me forever to get paper out of my purse and could hardly hold the pen to write. She gave me the name of "Dr. Laivley", the address at Medical City Dallas and the time and date next week. She asked if I was alright to drive home. I said yes. I sat there in that parking lot for a while just to get a grip on myself.

Waiting. . . .

I didn't hear anything from the doctor's office, so I called them that afternoon for the biopsy results. She called me back about 5:30 and told me that she didn't have the results yet, but that if they found something bad that they usually called her so she would be expecting it.

I slept that night with a little relief.

Needle Core Biopsy

We had to be at the Rowlett hospital at 10:30 to register for the biopsy at 11. I was relieved and comforted that the same young lady, Erica, was going to be doing the sonogram part of the biopsy that would show the radiologist where the tumors were for him to do the biopsy. I got undressed from the waist up. I was cold and asked David to put my coat over my legs. It was to be the first of many things he did for me as we started this journey.

Erica coated my right breast with iodine stuff. The tray of instruments was on my left, when the radiologist came in the room. When he came in, he asked that David wait outside. David told him that he had been a policeman and it wouldn't bother him. The guy says, well, but it may bother her. I told him immediately that I wanted David there with me. So that settled that. He picked up a syringe with a long needle on it from the tray----it was to deaden my breast. He then rolled the tray of instruments over to my right side of the bed I was on and that was the last thing I saw. I closed my eyes tight and didn't want to see anything else.

He deadened the area and then made a small 1/4 inch slit for the biopsy. It took the poor man FOREVER to get the samples from the tumor. It was very dense and that made it difficult for him to get the instrument in there. David said it looked like he was using a very long Phillips screwdriver on me. He kept apologizing over and over again to me because he was having to lean over on my stomach and chest area just to try to get the instrument inside the tumor. I could feel something running down my side as the biopsy went on and on, but I told myself that it was the iodine stuff (and not my own blood.) He took 8 samples from the area. When he finished, Erica came to clean me up. She put a bandage over the incision area, which bled for a while, so I knew then that it was my blood running down my side.

The radiologist told me that my OB/GYN should have the results of the biopsy Monday. I was pretty bruised and hurting in the afternoon.

The Sonogram & Mammogram

My sonogram was done by a wonderful young lady named Erica. She was warm, fun and caring. She did the sonogram with a younger trainee, who was left in the room with me while Erica got everything set up. Bless her heart, the trainee told me all sorts of horror stories about sonograms and what showed up on them. I'm thinking, "this girl is going to have to work on her bedside stories to make it in medicine."

Erica does the sonogram, over and over and over and over. She tells me that she is going to go get the radiologist to look at the sonogram picture, that this was standard procedure. That's when the first "ping" went off in my head. He comes into the dark room and runs the wand himself over the mass in my right breast, over and over and over. He leaves. He comes back and tells me that we need to do another mammogram to compare to the 5-2-06 one that I had done in Rockwall. He tells me that there are 2 masses there, not just one.

I walk with Erica to the mammogram room and the lady starts the torture, especially on the right breast, which was already tender just from the sonogram wand. She does the standard pictures, then leaves the room. She comes back and says that we need more pictures. Great. Worse torture. She leaves the room again. For a long time. The radiologist comes into the room and tells me that I need to have a needle core biopsy TOMORROW to see what we're dealing with to see if it is cancerous or not. Ping.

When I got home and told David what happened and what was scheduled, he said, "that's it, whatever you're doing from now on, I'm going with you." We talked and I cried, scared for the first time.