The MRI

Wednesday really sucked. Hopefully we get no more bad news.

Robin had a MRI in the morning and the results really altered the course we thought we were on. Instead of six very small tumors, it now seems like there is one large tumor instead. The approximate size is 7.4 cm x 3 cm x 4 cm. The good news was that there was no evidence of lymph node involvment.

Later in the afternoon, we had our first visit with Dr. Jeff Kirshner, a medical oncologist of Hematology/Oncology of CNY in Syracuse. He started considering the use of neoadjuvant therapy, which would be using chemotherapy first to shrink the tumor and slow any progression with the mastectomy happening later. This would be different than the traditional route of surgery followed by chemotherapy, know as adjuvant therapy. The reason is so that she doesn't have to wait for surgery recovery before starting chemotherapy. During our visit he picked up the phone to call one of his colleagues at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. After a few minutes of discussion, he hung up and told us that this is where we had to go. Originally, we thought he could refer us to Memorial Sloan Kettering in NYC. However, he says that this group in Boston are the world's leading experts on breast cancer in young women and if this were his wife or daughter, that's where they would go. He said this to us very kindly and very confidently.

We then went down for an ultrasound specifically to look at axillary lymph nodes (armpit). This also showed no evidence of enlarged lymph nodes. Another piece of good news and it agrees with the MRI, but neither test is great at finding lymph node involvement.

This week we are probably getting a bone scan and next week a PET scan to look for cancer in other parts of her body. We need to find out that there is cancer no where else.

Tuesday we travel to Dana-Farber to meet with a surgical oncologist and a medical oncologist that Dr. Kirshner recommended. Tuesday will be another very long day.

Of course, any of this may change depending on what we find out in Boston.

All of this is very scary for us and we appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers.