Well, this has certainly been a surprise...but thankfully, not to the Lord. As many of you know, I have been sick for the past 8 months and have been having tests done to try to find out what was causing me to run a fever along with extreme fatigue and general body aches. Basically, I have felt like I have had a really bad case of the flu for 8 months.
A little while back I had noticed that I had a little lump in my left breast. (I do sincerely apologize to the men reading this blog, normally I do not discuss this part of my anatomy but to tell my story I cannot avoid it.) Though I was so tired of medical tests, I thought I'd better just deal with this and went in to have it checked only to find out that the nurse practitioner found a couple more spots that she wanted to get checked out too. (By the way, if you need a good OB/GYN, I really love Dr. Rosemary Delgado in Walnut Creek.)
To make a long story short, God moved on my behalf and things began to happen at lightening speed. Within a week I had the biopsies done, seven to be precise!, had gotten the results back, got in to see the top breast cancer surgeons in the area who I REALLY like and saw one of the top oncologists in our area as well. It has been a bit of a whirlwind.
Questions I have been asked:
* Does the breast cancer explain the fevers I have been running? We don't know for sure. I think most doctors would say, "no," but I have read a medical journal article saying that any solid malignant tumor can cause fever, though it would be very rare for breast cancer. I feel like it is not out of the realm of possibility that my body could have been trying to warn me that something was wrong. You'll notice on the Calendar section that I have a PET Scan coming up on Thursday, they will be ruling out malignancies else where in my body, especially since I am still running a temperature.
*What kind of cancer do I have? The cancer is invasive, ductile carcinoma, meaning it has moved outside of the ducts in my breast in a couple of places. It has been graded as aggressive. They won't be able to "stage" it until after I have surgery.
*When will I have surgery? Sometime after July 14 when my surgeon gets back from vacation. At first I was discouraged by that news, but then I realized this just gives us more time to pray for healing!
*What kind of surgery am I having and will I have chemotherapy? I am having a double mastectomy followed by chemo. I won't know details about the chemo or if I need radiation as well until after the surgery. Also, we don't know yet if the lymph glands are involved. They will biopsy them during surgery.
My stance is to be aggressive in my response both through prayer as well as medically. This intruder must go! I am committed to LIFE, health and healing and to whatever is necessary to obtain those goals.
Finally, most of my blogs will not be this long. In the future some of them may come from Ron or my daughters depending on how I am feeling. I wanted to get you caught up on what has been going on though, so thus the longish entry. I will keep the Calendar up to date as much as possible and would appreciate your prayer for those appointments that are listed there. Any encouraging words, prayers or Scriptures you would like to share can be added as comments on either the Post-a-prayer or Guest Book. I would really love to hear from you and know that I will need your encouragement as I walk along this journey with Jesus.
So grateful for your support in this fight,
Leslyn
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