GOOD news for once!!!

I was not expecting to hear back from my breast surgeon so soon - I only had the surgery last Thursday so I figured the pathology from the excisional breast biopsy would take a least a week. When the phone rang just 5 minutes ago and I saw the hospital on the Caller ID, I knew it was her and I was scared. I was not mentally prepared for this yet.

I answered the phone and immediately my beloved, no-B.S. doctor just got right to the point. They saw nothing bad, not even the atypical hyperplastic cells that were seen on the less-invasive biopsy in July! Yay, yay, yay! This is the best news possible, I hadn't even been hoping for this much, I thought the best case scenario would be that they saw nothing worse than before. It didn't even enter my brain to possibly entertain the idea that they'd see NOTHING bad.

The doctor said there was the slightest chance that they excised the wrong area as the first biopsy should have left a clip in my breast to pinpoint the exact spot. However, the first biopsy radiologist didn't leave a clip because the nodule appeared to somewhat collapse as she biopsied it, which made her confident that it was only a (fluid-filled) cyst. We were both surprised to see an abnormal pathology on that one. They're 99% confident they got the right spot, and so am I, being the one poked and prodded. They did a pretty thorough ultrasound in the area before skewering me with that wire last Thursday, and this was the only obvious nodule, so - again - confident we got the right spot. The doctor also said this latest pathology also showed microscopic earlier trauma to the area, meaning it was almost definitely the area biopsied in the past.

I have a follow-up appointment with this doctor next week, to check on my incision and we'll talk about follow-up care to make sure I'm good going forward, probably another ultrasound and mammo in six months. I warned her that I was going to be asking her opinion on whether continuing fertility stims would be a bad idea for me and she launched right into it. She said if all she cared about for her patients was as a breast, she would advise them never to do fertility meds, never smoke, never drink, never do anything that could put the breast at risk. And she acknowledged that playing with your female hormones is not a great thing for any of our reproductive organs. But, she was so cool and adamant that she cares about her patients as a whole person and wants them to be happy and healthy as complete people and clearly having children is a big part of what will make me fulfilled and because of that, it's worth the risk. I told her my plan to do stims for maybe six more off-and-on months (IVF, break, IVF, break, etc.) and by then I'd be ready to move on to donor eggs anyway and she said six months in the scheme of things won't make a difference anyway.

I'm practically crying as I write this. Both from relief but also because I have been starved for good news over the past year. Two miscarriages, a practically zero response to three IUIs and IVF and four surgical procedures always had me looking around the bend, waiting for the next slap in the face. It's been such a long time since I hung up the phone after speaking with a doctor or nurse and had a smile on my face and it feels great.

NoodleGuy just got home and we're off for some celebration sushi and maybe even a scorpion bowl! Yippee!