Christmas Cheer!

It's good news!!!!

Today I got the pathology results from my surgery and it's great news :-)

They are very satisfied that they have removed a large margin of tumour-clear tissue around the lump and so will not need to remove any further tissue from the breast. Fab!

I had 3 sentinel lymph nodes removed during surgery (the first ones which any cancerous cells would get to... that's what the blue dye was for) and they came back free from cancer. Fab! Fab!

This means its fantastic news if it hasn't spread to the lymph nodes and I probably caught it quickly. Got to digest the news a bit now and it's still only the start of a long journey yet, but hearing my consultant say "My prognosis is good" is the best Christmas present James and I could get! Everyone was all smiles for me in clinic. I now just need to battle anything it may have left in my body to stop it coming back again or going somewhere else - and for that we have chemotherapy and radiotherapy. I will most likely also get hormone therapy with Tamoxifen for 5 years as well because the pathology has shown my tumor is probably oestrogen hormone sensitive. But now the surgery is done and dusted I can start thinking about all these next steps.

On a less important note, I have had my dressings taken off and the results revealed to me for the first time.... and its fab too! Seeing as they have taken out tissue the size of a plum it still looks the same as normal - bar a long scar on my breast and another under my armpit. I am so impressed. We are now full-steam-ahead for chemotherapy and I have an appointment made for this Thursday to discuss my drug regime etc and so I recon we are looking at starting early in the New Year - bring it on!

Feeling great and looking forward to a great Christmas!