Fabulous News!

Today Melissa heard from Dr. Shale, he wanted to know how she was feeling and she told him that if he would have called yesterday she would have told him blech! Today was a much better day. She has still had the anesthetic in her system which has been making her sick. She had color in her cheeks and she was animated when she talked. Her voice is better today but she is still not able to talk very loud and her throat is very sore. Dr. Shale told her that the lymph nodes were all clean! They had ended up taking out 6 instead of 3 and ALL 6 WERE CLEAN! This news is fabulous! It means that the cancer stage has been backed up from a 2b to a 2a (if the cancer had been in the lymph nodes the stage would have gone to a 3)! It also means that the chemo won't have to be as long or possibly, as often. However she still doesn't know some details, like how long they will actually do chemo. They will be telling her that when she sees her Doctors next week. She did find out that she will have to travel to Utah every 2 weeks to have the expanders adjusted. She had been hoping to be able to have that done here, but it is a little more complicated. They have to use a magnet to find the exact place to fill them. It is because of those that she is not able to raise her arms above her head for a few weeks while they get scar tissue around them. apparently there are some bad stories of people who do things they should not be doing and end up with the expanders in places they should not be! It was also discovered that there were pre-cancer calcifications all throughout the right breast, right up to the chest wall. YAY, for being aggressive and having the double mastectomy! The margins are all clean too! Which means they got it all! The tumor in her left breast was over 6 cm by the time they got it out, which means that since she discovered this it has grown 2 cm. The good news is that the tumor was actually 2 tumors that had grown together and only 2.5 cm were the aggressive kind of cancer which is another reason that the stage was backed up. They think she has probably had the less aggressive cancer for a much longer time but the aggressive one is new. 
Melissa said to make sure you all know how blessed she is! Her incisions are healing well and they may possibly take out the drains if they have under a certain amount of fluid draining when she returns to the Dr. Her appointment has been moved one day later than it was previously planned. The drains are very uncomfortable so that would be great. She needs to get all healed up before they can start the chemo. Thank you so much for everything you are doing for her and for her family. They are grateful for prayers, meals, cards, fundraising efforts, etc. Thank You!
                                                                                                         ~Nicole