Victoria's Fight

Victoria and I met with the surgical oncologist today and we couldn't have received better news. The pathology report came back from the lymph nodes and all of the breast tissue that was removed during Victoria's surgery and no cancer could be detected. The doctor told us that Victoria had a full pathological response and is in remission. This happens in about 15-20% of patients with Victoria's type of breast cancer. The chemotherapy did it's job and killed all of the cancer cells! As you can imagine this was very exciting news for us. Victoria and I are definitely ecstatic about the news and are looking forward to the road of recovery ahead of us. She will still finish out another 7 months of herceptin infusions, and will be on tamoxifen pills for the next 5 years. The herceptin is to prevent the type of breast cancer that she had from returning in what little amount of breast tissue she has remaining and the tamoxifen is to prevent cancer from showing up somew

Terrible! That pretty much sums it up. We knew the day would come and we knew that it would be tough, and no matter how much Victoria or I mentally prepared ourselves we knew that it was going to be an emotional day. Driving to the hospital in the morning Victoria expressed to me how much she loved me and how much she loved our son, she was very scared about the surgery and as positive and strong as Victoria is she was worried that she might not make it through. It wasn't Victoria's first time having a major surgery, but this one especially worried her. I tried to be strong, encourage her, and tell her that she wasn't allowed to think those thoughts. But then I decided to let her be as emotional as she wanted, she needed to get it out and I believe it calmed her down a little. We arrived at the hospital for Victoria's pre-op appointment and she seemed okay. I didn't ask her how she was. Instead I just told her that it would be okay and she had a lot of peop

I just finished talking with the doctor's and Victoria is doing very well. I'll be able to see her soon. The surgery went well. Three suspect lymphnodes were removed and all tested negative in the early pathology report. I will write more later, but wanted to get a quick update out. Thank you all for your words of encouragement, prayers and thoughts!