September 14, 2017
I had the second treatment with the macular specialist for my right eye yesterday.
Before I saw the doctor, the technician did the usual "read the chart" thing, and did a scan of the back of my eyeball. I did better with the chart than I did last month, and my scan results were spectacular! The doctor was impressed. He said they don't usually see results like this until nearly a year into treatment. His excitement was palpable.
It's nice to get some good news. And again, I felt nothing when he did the shot into the eye.
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I think I forgot to mention it, but I finally got another mammogram a week or so ago. I had a followup visit with the radiation oncologist and he asked when I'd had my last mammo, and I said it was over a year ago, before the diagnosis, and I'd been asking when I'd get the next, and everyone just shrugged, and I was getting concerned, so he wrote me the prescription for a diagnostic scan right then and there. (A diagnostic mammogram is different from a regular mammo - it's done with a radiologist looking at it in real time, as it's happening, so if there's anything questionable they can reshoot or zoom in right then, and you get the results immediately.) I am all clear. I was concerned about all the scar tissue in the right breast, and the underside of that breast where there's some hard scar tissue is very sensitive to pressure, but she said no problem, they could see clear through it.
Another way the diagnostic mammo is different from a regular is that the diagnostic mammogram is much more, uh, I don't know the word to use. It's much tighter, and they cram more of the material in, like you're being eaten by the machine. I still have the chemo port implant in my chest, about 1.5 inches below my collar bone. The technician crammed so much of my chest into the machine that the port was actually squished between the plates. Remember, I'm in my 70s, and that breast is a DD, so the breast is pretty far down these days. So to squish up to less than an inch from the collar bone is pretty durn impressive. In my entire life, that's the first time a mammo hurt - that port is hard!
My left breast is a DD. Now that the mutilated right has settled down, I estimate it to be about a C. I like the C much better! When I wear the right bra that raises up and cinches down the left, and clothing that skims rather than clings, you can barely see a difference. (Yes, there is a difference, but it's not immediately obvious.) However, because of the tenderness in the scar tissue, I prefer to do without a bra as much as possible, and then the difference is glaring. The unfettered left is MUCH lower, and it, uh, swings, whereas the right is high and tight. Sigh. By the time I'd be medically approved for surgery to reduce the left to match, I'll be too old to care anymore.
Anyway, clear, both breasts. Not much, but I'll take it.
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Oh, something I don't understand. The chemo doctor said that if I get a tumor in the left breast, or another in the right, it is not considered a a recurrence of the original cancer (not metastatic), but brand new cancer with likely different characteristics. If bits of the original tumor has traveled at all, it would go to the lungs, brain, liver, kidneys, bone, etc. etc. etc. Not the other breast.
I don't understand why it doesn't ever metastasize to the other breast (his implication). Doesn't make sense to me. If I were a wandering breast tumor cell, that's where I'd go....
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