part 2

Chapter 2

Told by Krista:

That night after we got home we had to make the calls to the parents, I let David (My Husband) do it. I wasn't capable. I can remember calling my Mom in Savannah and the only word I could get out of my mouth was ~ Mom, after that I cried and David talked to everyone.

The next morning we went to the Surgeon's office and met one of my favorite Drs. His name is Victor Pavamani and his nurse is Nancy. They were so wonderful to us, (and still are) explained everything, all of the options for surgical procedures. I had what apeared to be mirror image lumps in both breasts and we decided on lumpectomies and node removal for testing. After alot of discussion with the Dr we decided to schedule the operation for January 3rd, it was 2 weeks away and would not make that much difference in my health, but cancer surgery right at Christmas was more than we wanted us or the rest of the family to handle.

Shortly after all of this we left for Savannah for Christmas, gosh it was hard to face my Mom, but she is so strong. My parents were born and raised in the midwest and have that very "we can handle/face anything" attitude. I can remember her saying that it would be okay and my Dad saying not to worry he had already spoken to God and it would all be fine so there was nothing to worry about. My daughter Erin, was strong (like always) and David's family was wonderful.

It's really funny, I don't remember that much about how the holidays went after that. My brain just skips to right after Christmas, telling the office about the next steps in my care and the surgery on January 3. I had the lumpectomys the left side was positive for cancer along with 3 out of 12 nodes. The right side was negative. My Dr was so sure that the right side was positive that I later had a needle locator biopsy on that same side and he sent the tissue off to a different lab just to be sure, but Thank God it was only positive on the left side.

Once I was healed from the surgery it was off to meet my Medical Oncologist, Dr Freedman, there was a question of radiation first then Chemo or the opposite, since I had to have both, but we decided on Chemo first. I can remember 2 things very specifically that he told me, 1. Except for the Cancer you are very healthy,that works in your favor, and 2. We are going to make you very sick in order to make you better. He then asked me when did I want to start? I said how about right now ~ so that was my first treatment. So pretty much in one month I went from not even knowing I had cancer to being diagnoised, having surgery, beginning chemo and oh yeah ~~ 10 days later my hair fell out.