It was sounding like good news but it went bad real fast!

I am not sure that I understand this myself so explaining it is going to be difficult. When I had my original biopsy there was cancer in the breast. When I had the surgery and Dr H removed the lump he also removed the lymph nodes because they looked abnormal. He was right about that because they were positive for cancer. Now the pathology report for the tumor came back and said that there was no cancer in the tumor or the surrounding tissue that he removed. That was the part that sounded like good news! Where did it go? He is totally perplexed and has never seen this before. We know that it was there when they did the biopsy and that it did go into the lymph nodes. He said it is possible that they got it all with the biopsy but he thinks that is very unlikely. It is possible that it is somewhere else in the breast. We have to find the primary source of the cancer and in order to do that I need to have a complete mastectomy. (This is where it went south in a hurry.) So now in the midst of getting ready for Christmas, in the midst of Jessica’s visit from South Korea I am going to be having another surgery. The possible dates are Dec 9 or 10 (not likely cause that is tomorrow!) or Dec 16 or 17. He asked if I would be comfortable having one of his colleagues do it since he is leaving on an airplane on the 18th and I said I would prefer that he do it. He will rearrange his schedule for me so I am thinking the 16th or 17th.

He also said that I am at minimum a stage 2 cancer (whatever that means) but he thinks this is a fairly aggressive sort and we can’t really stage it properly or decide on the course of treatment until I have the bone and liver scan and the mastectomy.