The Lumpectomy

So after rescheduling the lumpectomy due to drying up breast milk and Dr. Naylor's schedule, we finally did it on August 21st at 9:50 a.m.

Kristy had a breakdown going into the surgery from all the stress with home and family and the unknowns of the surgery. The anesthesiologist had to give her something to calm her down.

The lumpectomy goes like this:
They take out the cancerous lump and the tissue surrounding it, in the hopes of getting a "clear margin" - where all the surrounding tissue that is left in the breast doesn't contain cancer. If the margins are found to be unclear, the surgeon has to go back in and operate again.

They also inject a dye into the breast before surgery to show which lymph nodes are the first to drain from the breast. These are called "sentinel lymph nodes" - and the surgeon will take them all out (each person has a different amount) and the pathologist dissects them right there to see if any has cancer. If any of them have cancer, that means the cancer has spread to other parts of your body.

They have to do an axillary dissection, meaning they take a bunch more lymph nodes from under your arm - giving you more problems and the risk of getting lymphedema (major arm swelling).

SO- the surgeon went in and took out the cancer, the surrounding breast tissue, and the sentinel lymph nodes. There were 4 sentinal nodes. The pathologist dissected them and the first 3 lymph nodes were clean, no cancer. And then the 4th had cancer. They took 11 lymph nodes total and only that 4th one had cancer.