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Pathology Report

The wait is over! The results are in! Dr. Dirbas called with the pathology report. I know, it is hard to believe. We are having trouble believing it ourselves. We were just enjoying this “not knowing the details” period so much, we were so sad to have it come to an end.

The pathology report shows 6 cm of DCIS with a small 3 mm area of invasive cancer. So like me, she has stage 1 cancer - stage 1a to be exact.  The two sentinel nodes are completely clear.  The invasive cancer is small enough Dr. Dirbas thinks chemo is out of play but Tamoxifen is probably in play. We will talk about this more with our oncologist Dr. Carlson in, get this, three weeks. Because hell, what is the rush, right?

Dr. Dirbas confirmed that in one area, the clear margin was less than 1 mm.  The gold standard for clear margins is 10 mm all around.  Therefore, he will go in during the second surgery (the surgery during which Jul will receive her permanent implant) and take more tissue and skin in order to make this margin clear.

Overall good news tempered by realism.  The extremely conservative Dr. Dirbas promclaimed, “I doubt this one will come back and bite you.  I think we got away with one here.”  We’ll take it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Pathology Report”

  1. John Says:
    March 8th, 2006 at 9:25 am

    Julie and Scott,

    That is great news. Glad you finally heard back. Keep up the good work fighting this stuff off, Julie!!

    love John

  2. Saira Says:
    March 8th, 2006 at 10:35 am

    Julie and Scott:

    This is fantastic news! We’ve been refreshing the page 100x a day waiting to hear along with you.

    Much love, Morace Clan

  3. Bryan Cantrill Says:
    March 8th, 2006 at 2:14 pm

    And there was much streaking.

    That’s great news — it must be a huge relief! Thanks again for keeping everyone updated through this blog. Especially during such a trying time, it’s difficult to be telling the same (incomplete) story 10,000 times a day, so hopefully the blog ended up lowering your anxiety too. (Speaking for your friends and family, it certainly lowered ours to be kept in the loop!) Anyway, here’s to a speedy and complete recovery and to many clean bills of health in the months and years to come!

    Love, Bryan, Brigid and Tobin

  4. Ed Says:
    March 8th, 2006 at 3:44 pm

    Dear Scott and Julie,

    This sounds encouraging. You deserve the best news out there because of who you both are, not to mention because of the way you have handled this challenge.

    Keep hangin’ tough!

    Love,

    Ed & Mary

  5. Katie Ahlquist Says:
    March 8th, 2006 at 4:26 pm

    Thanks for the update, for sharing your journey with us.
    With love, and prayers for more good (and better) news,

    Katie

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