Friday - May 09, 2008

 good news/bad news

"Close" only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades.

The good news is that the lymph node was clean as a whistle, the cyst was acceptably weird ("We'll just have to keep an eye on it") and I'm healing quite nicely.  

"There's a lot of fluid in there," She commented as she poked my breast and nodded to the visiting intern who had the privilege of sitting in on my post-op, "hear that sloshing?"  She grinned.

I'm not sure if she was getting off on showing her handiwork to the intern, or having visions of water balloons at a summer barbeque, but she was having way too much fun.

The bad news is that the medial margin was not enough.  "Remember the four margins?" She asked, shooting me a scary-teacher look.  Yep. (please don't make me name them...all I really remember is that you take more than you think you need to, in hopes that you get enough...).

The medial margin is toward the middle of the chest, which to me was good news because they don't have to dig deeper into my muscle or closer to my armpit.  Which would be more painful and difficult healing. 

"We got most of it, but we have to go back and take another slice from this area right here..." She drew a line with her finger and cocked her head sideways and then her mouth went even more sideways, "You'll probably have an indentation there."  

Oh well.  I'd rather have a funky cosmetic issue than a limited range of motion.  So I have a dent and a couple of scars.  Maybe when radiation is finished I'll get a tattoo over it all.

Anyway, FYI I'm going to Disneyland again in 3 weeks - Thursday, May 29th.