NEGATIVE NODES

My pathology report is back from my surgery. Good News..... They didn't find any additional cancer cells in the lymph nodes. The only node that had cancer cells was the Sentinel Node.

The sentinel lymph node is the first node "standing guard" for your breast. In sentinel lymph node dissection, the surgeon looks for the very first lymph node that filters fluid draining away from the area of the breast that contained the breast cancer. If cancer cells are breaking away from the tumor and traveling away from your breast via the lymph system, the sentinel lymph node is more likely than other lymph nodes to contain cancer.

The idea behind sentinel node dissection is this: Instead of removing ten or more lymph nodes and analyzing all of them to look for cancer, remove only the one node that is most likely to have it. If this node is clean, chances are the other nodes have not been affected. In reality, the surgeon usually removes a cluster of two or three nodes—the sentinel node and those closest to it.

Well, for me this node was positive so the surgeon removed a small section of axillary nodes. All together he removed a total of 14 lymph nodes and they were all negative.

THAT'S WONDERFUL NEWS!!!!

Even though those nodes were negative I still need to undergo chemotherapy treatment because of two things: (1) my young age and (2) size of tumor. Any tumor over 1cm needs chemo and young women diagnosed with breast cancer need chemo. I'm told and from what I've read - breast cancer in young people is usually more aggressive.

Chemotherapy will be step number two for me in this journey of breast cancer.