Round Five yesterday, and so far everything seems to be proceeding according to schedule. Dr Joyce (my oncologist, natch) was encouraging – she can hardly feel the tumor anymore, it’s shrunk so much, and although she confirmed that I am probably, essentially, in menopause right now, she doesn’t think that will be a permanent condition.
I also got back the results of my genetic testing, which were … confusing. I do indeed have a mutation in the BRC1 gene, but it is “of uncertain significance,” not necessarily the kind that means I’ll be getting more cancer forever. They’ve put me in a file, and they’ll be watching me and people with similar mutations for the next several years. Right now, given this result, Dr Joyce isn’t recommending the bilateral mastectomy. I need to discuss it a little further with my surgeon in Buffalo, but right now it looks like a lumpectomy is in my future – which is awesome, given the aforementioned tininess of my tumor. It seriously used to feel like a ping pong ball; Herceptin is an amazing drug!
What else has been going on? Ages ago my parents sent me some mail-order frozen steaks, and on Sunday Josh and I had the schmorgasboard of steaks, grilling three steaks three different ways and sampling each. The fourth I sauteed according to Julia Child’s recipe, with a simple red wine reduction – very tasty. I also had some nice green beans and little fingerling potatoes from the market, which tonight I’m having with a turkey breast Josh scored for free from work. (Don’t ask how.) I feel pretty under the weather – let’s just say Jeeves’ pick-me-ups would be a godsend to the cancer community – but I have so far managed to brine and roast the breast, so good for me.
On Sunday I went to a mall in Indianapolis with my friends Kari and Misty, which was very entertaining. I’m not sure when I last went shopping with female friends, but it must have been years. It was, perhaps, even more fun since Kari and Misty are terribly stylish and frequent very high-end shops I’d normally be afraid to enter, like Saks and Nordstrom. In Saks I tried on, at Kari’s insistance, a pair of $170 skinny jeans, which looked surprisingly good – I’d thought they were a style no one could pull off. I didn’t get them, of course – as Josh pointed out, $170 is only the starting price, I’d also have to pay for years of therapy to get over the guilt, plus I’d probably have to have them hemmed. But it was fun to pretend, if only for a moment, to be a fashionista.