Grrr! Another friend with cancer!

[thewayne]

I just found out that the wife of an Ex-Buffalo has Stage 5 breast cancer with lymphoma. (They live in TX and are not in the blogsphere as far as I know) The only thing that I can figure is that she didn't get regular breast exams. I have no idea if she has a family history of this, I never knew them.

Curiously the Wikipedia entry lists a highest level as Stage 4, but it isn't an absolute reference, just a good one. And it's possible that a communication glitch could have skewed the stage, regardless it's still serious.

Interestingly, just this morning I came across this article on Slashdot about success using capsaicin, or hot chili peppers, in treating mice with prostate cancer.


FYI, an Ex-Buffalo is someone who was employed by Flying Buffalo during their heydays of the mid 80's. There are honorary Ex-Buffalos who are spouses of Ex-Buffalos, and Ex-Buffalo Wannabees who hung out enough at Flying Buffalo to sort of qualify but who never actually worked there.

I am a bona fide Ex-Buffalo, as are several others on my flist.

Comments

[deborak]

I hadn't surfed to FBI in ages, and since you had a handy link there I clicked it. Was interested to see that the hardback Grimtooth's Traps collection had come out. Traps Bazaar is reprinted as part of it. It just reminded me how hard I had to fight to get all of you guys paid for that. Makes me wonder if any of you are credited in the new release. Joe and Jim at least have their names in the front matter from contributing to the older Grimtooth stuff (you can see the first few pages of the new book at drivethrurpg.com).

[slashophile.livejournal.com]

:hugs: Best wishes and thoughts and prayers to her.

[cardigirl.livejournal.com]

Not good to hear. We're all getting older, and the inevitable consequences are starting to catch us (we're none of us gettin' outta here alive, unfortunately). Would you email me who this is please?

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

On its way.

Setting the record straight

[(Anonymous)]

Just to put here what I put in an email to a bunch of friends to try and straighten things out:

We found the lump on March 1st and because of an intervening vacation, could not investigate further until the 15th of March. On the 15th we saw a Dr. and he sent us to get a mammogram on the 16th.

The mammogram showed an 8cm by 3cm mass that is very deep in the left breast. They also found something irritated in the left armpit that everyone is saying is a lymphnode. The size and nature of the mass make it a type 5, by mammogram and sonogram standards of abnormality. 5 being the most suspicious or abnormal. Our mutual friend misunderstood and thought we'd said stage 5 cancer. Since he has cancer and is familiar with the stages of cancer, not the mammogram terminology, it's understandable that he might come to this erroneous conclusion (but, I'm still not letting him off the hook... much).

Our Dr. said that with a mass of this nature you go straight to surgery and sent us to a surgeon he trusts. We saw the Surgeon on the 20th, which just happens to be my wife's 40th birthday. After examining my wife, he said that he'd prefer to do a biopsy and go from there rather than charging ahead with only what he saw on the mammogram and sonogramam, as well as what he was able to determine from his own examination.

Me? I'm taking hope from this. It's my feeling that if the information he had available told him this was a critical situation, then we'd be in the hospital now rather than waiting for a biopsy and it's results. That said, I don't want to trivialize the seriousness of the situation.

The biopsy is scheduled for Wednesday March 22nd in the morning at 9:30. From what our first Dr. said, we don't expect to know results until Friday March 24th.

Re: Setting the record straight

[(Anonymous)]

Update:

22nd of March: We got back from the Radiologist doing the Biopsy. One of the things he did was to place titanium markers to show where the lesion is for future work. He commented that the biopsy didn't look like any cancerous material he'd ever seen and that it looked like a fibroid adinoma. However, he also noted that he's never seen a fibroid adinoma this large. He confirmed that we won't get full results until Friday.