Lots o' updates

I had my follow-up appt with Dr. Boob this morning and all went well. It's two weeks after my surgery, so they needed to remove the sutures and listen to me whimper about the allergic reaction I've been having to the surgical tape. There's not alot they can do for the rash, it's all gross and dry now, so it's a matter of letting it flake off. But it's such an itchy mofo, it's driving me bananas. The doctor said I could try benadryl but was not all that concerned. And I guess when you spend all day with cancer patients, an "itchy" nipple is pretty low on your list of priorities.

She again went over the biopsy results, that they found absolutely nothing bad this time (yippee!) but said that my risk of developing breast cancer one day has double/tripled over the rate of the general Caucasian female public. I say Caucasian, because there are pretty drastic differences in rates amongst races, so I was judged against my peer group. Over the next 5 years, my risk (at my age) is 1.5% to another's .5%. Still a 98.5% chance of NOT developing it, and I'll definitely take those odds. Then, my risk of developing BC by the time I'm 90 (if I should be so lucky) is 24% to others 12%. I don't LOVE those odds, but it's still saying I have a 75% chance of not developing it, ever. Dr. Boob is great, we both lean on the aggressive side for treatment, so she thinks with good monitoring, even if I did develop anything eventually, we'd catch it early. The plan is to do a follow up ultrasound on this issue in six months and then move to the usual annual mammograms. She said I could have the option of also staggering in annual MRIs. I'll have to research this, especially the risk of repeated MRIs. I know they have a risk false positives, so it's mostly a choice of potential needless surgical biopsies for the peace of mind that you're catching anything early. My gut says that I would opt to do the MRIs -- I'd rather be safe than sorry, but I'll need to ponder.

I was also going to write about the chromosomal karyotype results that I FINALLY got on Peanut today, after repeated hounding of the OBGYN's office. But, alas, I need to do some work, will post on that tomorrow...