Stage 1 Tumor
Follow-up post-surgical appointment today with my Surgeon. Nodes negative. Stage 1 tumor was a total wimp and measured a measly one centimeter. It’s the embarrassing garbanzo bean of cancers. Like not weighing enough to enter the light weight division before a big high school wrestling meet. Could have been worse. It could have been like a lentil or a pea. Puny. I don’t understand how I even felt it.
I did offer to as many of my friends as I could to cop a feel of my stage 1 tumor so they would know what to feel for when doing their own self-exams. A one woman walking boob community service message. Sorry, Jay. The booth is closed now, even though boys can get boob cancer too. A garbanzo bean sized cancer is like not even having cancer. It’s like having a cancerette. Or being cancerish. No golf ball sized tumors for me.
I assume having cancer is like anything else in life and there are subtle hierarchies of respect that accompany certain kinds of cancer and cancer stages and the like. Will the Stage 4’s even talk to me when I’m waiting in line for my silly radiation treatments in about a month? Stage 4’s being the Sopranos of the cancer world. I am totally not messing with them. They go to the front of the line.I won’t know about chemotherapy until I talk with my Medical Oncologist at the end of next week. Radiation is the price you pay to have a lumpectomy as opposed to a mastectomy, so radiation is a certainty. With respect to my biomarker results, ER positive and PR positive indicate any escapee cells I develop respond well to anti-hormone drugs. HER2 negative means I am less likely to progress to metastatic disease. All in all, it was a very good cancer day.
Totally love that!
Jencoy
T-Shirt Idea: “CANCER: Bean there, done that.”
In an effort to make me feel better, my friend, Chave, pointed out that there are actually five stages of cancer, starting with Stage 0 which include non-invasive cancers. Since mine was invasive, it’s bumped to Stage 1. If I had lymph node involvement &/or tumor was much larger, it would have been Stage 2. So I can feel okay that I was the A cup of cancers, not the double AA!
Jencoy
Yes to good news! Praying for more. You go, girl.
Should I say congratulations it’s a garbanzo bean?? 🙂 That’s great news to hear actually. And if a day with cancer can be called a good one, then I guess this would be one of those days!