Walking With Brenda

Hello friends and family. The interesting stuff began Tuesday February 7, when Brenda at an appointment with a general surgeon. I thought her appointment was with someone else, but no. Anyway, this general surgeon had performed a biopsy of one of Brenda’s lymph nodes that had formed a little bump. This kind of thing is usually nothing to worry about, but her family doctor (in a fit of wisdom) evidently thought it should be biopsied nonetheless. Anyway, at her appointment that afternoon, Brenda learned the troubling news: the lymph node lump was in fact “metastatic adenoacarcinoma, consistent with metastasis from a breast primary”. Yeah. That’s cancer.

Brenda and I had plans to have dinner with a friend that night. Brenda canceled the plans and came home and said: “I have something to tell you.” She never says that, so I knew something was up. The pathology report also said that the result was HER2-negative; the significant majority of new breast cancers are HER2-negative, which means that the cancer tends to grow and spread more slowly. The estrogen receptor was also strongly positive, meaning it’s more likely to respond to hormonal therapy.

The biopsy results led to a flurry of activity, include fast appointments with another surgeon and another appointment with an oncologist. The challenge right now is that, although it’s obvious Brenda’s lymph node tested positive, we don’t know where the root of the problem lies, or even what it is. The biopsy said it was “consistent with metastasis from a breast primary”. But we haven’t found that primary or whatever else. So that’s a pretty unusual situation: smoke and the sound of a shot going off, but where’s the gun? Deepening the mystery is that Brenda passed a screening mammography in September, but we’re not sure if that means the mammography missed something or whether there was nothing there at all at the time.

The truth is that we just don’t know. Brenda has a CT scan scheduled for Saturday February 15, and a bone scan scheduled for Tuesday February 21. We’re worried about spreading, and the scans should tell us more. The situation is pretty vague right now, but should clear up considerably in the coming weeks. In the meantime, it’s encouraging to remember that the pathologist was pretty sure that the bad stuff is hanging out in the breast and the lymph node. But Tom Petty was right: the waiting is the hardest part.