A Bit of Good News

I’m happy to share that last night, the doctor called with a bit of the good news we’ve been praying for! As they are working on analyzing all the tissue they removed, some of the pathology reports have come back so my doctor wanted to share before the weekend (cuz she’s the best!).

Good news #1: Turned out the mass was measured to be 4.1 cm. The surgeon removed 4.9 cm of tissue, and all the extra margins all the way around the mass were clear – which is exactly what we were going for so that is GREAT news! That means they got it all!!!

Good news #2: They are still testing the lymph nodes, so we don’t have the final word on that yet. But so far they have tested 5 nodes, and all of those 5 have been clear as well. YAY!!

Fun fact…we don’t actually know how many lymph nodes were removed. In layman’s terms, lymph nodes are in a cluster when they are in your body. So last week when we did the biopsy test, the surgeon specifically removed three from the cluster. But since those three were positive, this week she just removed the entire cluster. That cluster gets sent to the lab, and the lab goes through and locates each node to test it individually. (Insert “The More You Know” with shooting star rainbow here.)

So, while that’s probably more information than you care to know, the bottom line is that they are still testing the remaining lymph nodes that were removed, however many that may be, and we are still waiting to hear the results and expect to hear sometime this week.
If you remember, if just one more is found to have cancer cells in it, it means automatic radiation. But we are continuing to believe that all the rest are going to come out clear and radiation and chemo won’t be needed!

Another quick update, the infection in my throat has cleared up so I’m no longer confined to eating soup and jello! Bring on the good stuff!

As always, thanks again for all your prayers. Our prayer requests remain the same as a couple days ago;
1) The pathology to come back with all clear lymph nodes and no need for chemo or radiation
2) Complete healing so we never see this again
3) Good rest for both Matt and I in the meantime