Confirmed Diagnosis

We got the confirmed diagnosis Monday. Invasive Moderately Differentiated Ductal Carcinoma and Metastatic Ductal Carcinoma of the right Axillary nodes. My mom has breast cancer.

A little background on my mom: She is a stroke survivor, 3 times over. March of 2007 she fell and shattered her right arm and needed 5 hours of reconstructive surgery to save it. June of 2007 she was hit with 2 strokes at once, one on each side of her brain. The doctor discovered that she had a patent foramen ovale (a hole in the heart that closes right after birth) and a clotting factor that causes the veins in her legs to produce thousands of tiny microscopic blood clots. These clots normally would be filtered out through the lungs, but with the hole in her heart, some of the clots were able to bypass the lungs and go to the brain. Over time, they built up and created a clot large enough to cause a stroke.

Her arm that she had rebuilt has very limited range of motion and is full of pins and plates and screws and various other metal pieces. Add the physical and mental after effects of the strokes and she was a big ol' mess for a while. My stepdad decided that he couldn't be with her anymore because she had "changed", so in September of 2008 he packed up and left her. When he left, he took the health insurance with him. She was left with nothing and no ability to work.

So, I began the process of getting her signed up for Disability benefits through Social Security. She was denied immediately. I then appealed the decision and after months and months of paperwork and red tape, she was finally approved for SSI in August of 2009. Along with her SSI, she also qualified for Medicaid for health insurance.

Because it took so long to get her approved and everything set up once she was approved, she neglected to inform me that she had found a lump in her right breast. She claimed that since she could not go to a doctor yet, there was no use in saying anything. If she had said something, I would have found a way to get her in to see someone, somewhere.

She had her first appointment with her new doctor on October 14. He checked the lump and set her up for a mammogram immediately. It was schedule for October 21. She had that done and the radiologist decided to refer her to have a needle biopsy done. That was done on October 23.

She had an appointment yesterday, October 26, to see her doctor and get the results of the biopsy.

It's all happening so fast, which is a really good thing, I guess. there just has not been any real time for all of this to sink in yet. We are now at the point where we are waiting for authorization from Medicaid for her to go see the breast surgeon.

The tumor is the size of a baseball, so more than likely when they remove it, there will not be enough tissue left to do reconstruction. She is devastated at the thought of losing her breast. I have done nothing but read any and every book that I can find on breast cancer since the doctor first uttered the words, "I would stake my license that this is breast cancer." So I am aware that this one of the most common types of breast cancer. And that it is very treatable.

It's still scary as hell. I've been holding it together pretty well since the doctor first mentioned the possibilty of cancer. But today, I'm not doing so hot. It's hard right now to keep myself together and be strong for my mom, my baby girl and for myself.