AlizaMLS's Journey:

I was surprised-very surprised, but not especially emotional, and began making inquiries and doing research. I'm a trained Medical Librarian. My ex-husband's an MD and my daughter's a Paramedic, so I know it's useless to be paralyzed in these situations.

I had a sentinel lymph node biopsy and was lucky enough to fiind that there was no cancer in the sentinel node. They got all the cancer when they removed the breast so I am now cancer free!! If my HER2 is negative, I will not need chemotherapy. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

As mentioned before when you have a mastectomy at Sloan Kettering, they also perform a reconstruction at the same time, so they put in an expander to get the tissue ready for a silicone implant. However, I now have cellulitis and was in the hospital (Sloan) for 5 days last week until yesterday on IV antibiotics. My reconsructed breast site is still swollen, red and tender (painful-need painkillers) and I'm hoping the oral antibiotics they sent me home with can handle this so I don't have to have the expander removed and start over from square one...<sigh>

I had cellulitis for 2 days about a week and a half following my mastectomy so my plastic surgeon hospitalized me on IV vancomycin, then about 10 days later, I had another bout of cellulitis on the breast with the expander while my plastic surgeon was at a conference, so the head Fellow hospitalized me and put me on IV vancomycin and while I was in the hospital I contracted the flu. They gave me Tamiflu, but I stayed there almost a week because my temperature was so high.

I do not need chemotherapy. I found out through Oncotype testing. I scored 8 out of 100. I'm on adjuvant therapy - Tamoxifen for the next year or so and I love my Oncologist! She's wonderful!!

Tamoxifen causes more hot flashes than I'd been having on my own, as well as some bone pain, but I'm so happy that I didn't have to have chemotherapy that I'm willing to cope with these.

I had my procedure performed at Memorial Sloan Kettering in NYC, so they routinely perform reconstruction at the same time as the mastectomy. I was given an expander which was filled with saline. The idea is that despite the mastectomy, it's not as traumatic, because you don't wake up with your "breast" entirely gone (though it's smaller and there's a pretty bad scar).