Good....No GREAT News!!!

We had our appointment with the Oncologist, Dr. Hazzi, in Ottumwa yesterday and he shared the pathology report with us from my surgery on 2/18/09. They removed an area from under my left arem that measured 8 x 7.5 x 1.5 cm. The tissue contained 11 lymph nodes and all 11 were NEGATIVE FOR MALIGNANCY!...or in laymans terms, NO MORE CANCER FOUND! That was the best possible news we could have gotten. This is the Final Surgical Pathology Report so there shouldn't be any surprises.

Dr. Hazzi concurred with U of I on the 0 to 10% focally positive hormone results. As far as he is concerned that result is equal to my malignancy being "not hormone positive." This pathology result indicates to him also that I should have the more aggressive, non-hormone chemotherapy. He suggested a little different schedule than U of I, but they basically agreed with the 16 weeks, receiving treatment every other week. We were already acquainted with Dr. Hazzi personally and he is a very kind, competent physician. His office is in the McCreery Cancer Center is beautiful. We are however still deciding where to go for me to receive my chemo. We will be making a decision this next week so they can get me scheduled and get all my "million dollar" drugs ready.

I just want to thank everyone for all of their prayers, calls, food, visits, friendship and support since this journey started on 1/16/09. Everyone asks us if there is more that they can do. Everyone has already done so much, but this long process has just started so I am sure there is going to be plenty of opportunity down the road and we are very grateful for those offers. We will keep the blog current and I will post a new entry after every visit with one of our care providers.

In closing, please note that we added a new area on our blog. There are many others who could benefit from your thoughts and prayers as well and I thought that since there were so many prayers going up that we could add these families to them. Even though we have had many trials over the past 5 years, we are always grateful that there are challenges that we have not had to face.

That brings me to my quote today. I don't know who the original author was, but my mother used it a lot with us, so I will give her the credit......"I felt bad because I had no shoes, until I met the man who had no feet."