Dear friends and family,
As promised, I am writing with an update. The past (almost) two weeks have involved a lot of doctors’ appointments and phone consultations, and even more waiting. We have been buoyed by all of the love and prayers, food, cards, gifts, and general well wishes. While I have not been able to respond to every note, please know that I appreciate hearing from folks, and the messages mean a lot. Thank you.
So, now the details… I will have outpatient surgery this Thursday – there will be two surgeries performed over the course of the day. The first is called a sentinel node biopsy, and it is essentially the mapping and then removal of lymph nodes. Until the initial mapping is done (using more nuclear medicine – woo hoo!) we will not know how many lymph nodes need to be removed. The area of focus is the left side of my neck, under the tumor site. After that diagnostic and biopsy is performed, I will then have a wide excision of my tumor site. This is going to involve the removal of my lower left ear lobe. Dr. Lee, the plastic surgeon, will initially do a skin graft, and we will do reconstruction once I have begun to heal.
As I mentioned, this is outpatient surgery. We will check in at 5:30am, and we should be home by 5pm or so. (And many thanks to the various friends who have volunteered to watch Buddy, house us in GB the night before, and keep Rhonda company in the hospital all day!)
The other update is that I am currently scheduled for a second opinion at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City on March 2nd. While we were initially exploring Midwestern options, it was actually my insurance company that encouraged me to seek out a second opinion at MSK – one of the top-two melanoma clinics in the country. Although I feel as though I might jinx myself by saying this, we were very surprised to learn that my insurance will be paying for airfare and a hotel, as well as the cost of the consultation. While we initially thought that the second opinion should come before surgery, we soon learned that they require the pathology from the sentinel node biopsy.
We are still gathering information, and the ultimate treatment plan is still to be determined. The pathology reports from Thursday’s surgery will be important to a clear understanding of where the cancer has spread in my body. The more long-term (and still very tentative) plan is that I may have to have an additional surgery in later March, followed by the beginning of treatment once I have adequately healed. Although this might change after the second opinion, the standard course of treatment for melanoma is interferon, not chemotherapy.
I would like to ask for continued prayers, visualizations, or whatever form of positive energy works for you. In addition to imagining me well (and in the garden), I would like to ask you to please keep Rhonda and I, as well as and my surgeons – Dr. Cindy Geocaris and Dr. James Lee – in your thoughts on Thursday. Finally, as one goal of Thursday’s procedure is to get more details on how far the cancer has spread, feel free to imagine that it hasn’t spread very far at all! In addition, we hope for a clear margin around the tumor – in other words, imagine that Dr. Lee gets all of the cancerous tissue.
With hope,
Amy
No comments:
Post a Comment