MRI and plan of action: In detail

OK so I was pretty exhausted after yesterday and just gave a quick update so you knew I did get some news but I'm going to write the whole day down just so I remember everything.

I dropped Camden off at Krista's and headed in for my MRI around 8:30. Krista was so nice to watch him and said he was good the whole time! I was pretty nervous about the MRI only because they said I would need an IV and I hate needles! I get quite queasy, a little  dizzy, and pretty white (Katie Mullins might remember how good I looked after giving blood freshman year!) but I didn't want Dan to have to take the whole day off so I sucked it up and went. It seems like the usual wait time to see a doctor now is about an hour so I chilled in my hospital gown browsing Pinterest for a while. I took a picture but I looked pretty rough so I deleted it! After an hour the tech came back and brought me to the MRI room. She gave me the IV and I got pretty queasy as per usual. They had me lay face down in the machine and said it would take about a half hour to complete the scan. Laying that way actually made me less queasy and it wasn't too uncomfortable at first. (Without going into too much detail lets just say there are holes in certain places so they can scan the affected areas with out any squish-age) Towards they end of the test they inject contrast through my IV so they can see better. The contrast was really cold going through my arm and felt weird but didn't make me feel sick like they said it might. During the 7 minute scan (you aren't allowed to move at all during the scan) I had to sneeze. I couldn't do anything about it so I sneezed a whole lot of snot right onto their machine. It was so nasty! I apologized to the tech and she said not to worry but she didn't see how nasty it was. I was worried I would feel sick after standing up but I just wanted to blow my nose so badly that I didn't even think about it. I drove home and got Camden down for nap. Dan came home early and we woke Camden up to go to Sherri's house while we went to the oncologist in Provo. My Oncologist is named Dr. Bott and he is really nice. We waited for about an hour to see him and then I got some blood work done, was weighed and waited a bit more. By the time we saw him my MRI results had been posted. He looked at them and told us there was still no new news. He said my tumor is 9cm and that some lymph nodes look prominent (worrisome!) but they still can't tell if the suspicious spots are invasive cancer or not. He went over the pros and cons of doing chemo first at this stage and the only point that mattered to me was that there is still a chance I might not need it and there is no way I'm doing chemo if I don't need to. We all agreed it would be best to move forward with surgery and decide about chemo after. Dan and I asked about how chemo would effect having kids and he said it may or may not. Very UNHELPFUL! He said we could delay chemo to harvest some eggs if that was the route we wanted to go. The possibility of not being able to have kids was a pretty big blow that we weren't expecting since my doctor implied it wouldn't be effected by my cancer at all. I am lucky that my cancer is not estrogen/progesterone positive or future pregnancies would have been out of the question from the beginning. Dan and I went home and read up a lot about the process of harvesting eggs (you have to give yourself shots for a week), the cost, and the chances of a successful birth with frozen eggs. After playing with Camden (having so much more love for the one baby we are very lucky to have) and putting him to bed we talked about what to do next. We both felt that freezing eggs was the wrong decision for us. Neither of us is sure our family is complete but we just felt right about dealing with this cancer and then seeing where we are after. Maybe the results of the testing they do after surgery will change my mind but I don't think so. So, we are set to do a mastectomy with reconstruction on Wed the 13th. I should find out the pathology report a couple of days after that and then I have another meeting with Dr. Bott scheduled on the 28th of March.  We will meet with the plastic surgeon this afternoon so I will post again if anything interesting happens.

Sorry for the novel! Overall Dan and I are feeling pretty tired, a little overwhelmed, but oddly ok. We are frustrated at the lack of knowledge we have about just what this cancer is, the money that we would have loved to spend elsewhere, and the loss I will go through but even more than that, we are grateful that this cancer is 99% curable and that in a year from now we will be moving on to happier things. We are grateful to have family and friends who love us and support us and who have offered to come help from various parts of the country and who have already helped with kind words and prayers. We are grateful that we have the money in savings to deal with this trial and that Dan has a job that will allow him to use his vacation time whenever. We are super super grateful for our little family and for the fact that we have each other forever.

OK, that is enough sappy stuff! I'm debating getting my hair cut shoulder length so that if I have to do chemo I won't have such a drastic change. Suggestions? I love the length of my hair now and might be a bit sad if I cut it off prematurely but I probably won't be able to do my hair for a month after surgery anyway....Oh the little vanities!