A Pink Ribbon of Hope

Saturday, March 16, 2013 will be a day that I'm not likely to forget for the rest of my life.  I slept in some and then got up to get ready to go work out at the Gym.  I looked at my phone and noticed that I had a message from my sister Katie, who had called earlier in the morning.  After I listened to her message, I knew that something was wrong from the tone of her voice.  I became worried that maybe somebody had died or was seriously injured so I called her back right away.

She answered the phone and when I asked if she was okay, it took her about a full minute to tell me that she had just received a diagnosis of breast cancer the previous evening. She cried terribly and told me that she was so scared of dying.  It just broke my heart into a million pieces!

She said that her last mammogram was three years ago and that she wished that she'd not waited so long in between.  The nurse practitioner who examined her felt something in her breast and the mammogram confirmed that she had three tumors in one of her breasts.  A subsequent biopsy revealed that she has Invasive Lobular Carcinoma (ILC) Grade Two in two of the three tumors.

I talked with her for a long time on the phone. I'm very familiar with the fear of cancer and dying.  I went through a bad ovarian cancer scare late last year and ended up undergoing a complete hysterectomy.  Fortunately for me, the diagnosis ended up being severe endometriosis. However, I'll never forget the numbing fear of waiting three weeks and then going into a surgery not knowing if a diagnosis of cancer awaited me.  The unknown is the biggest fear of all!  I asked her to please call the doctor's office on Monday and get the doctor or nurse there to answer all of her questions.

After our telephone conversation, I conducted some research on ILC and found out that it doesn't spread as fast as other types of cancers.  Our brother Mark talked to some doctors at a school dinner that he attended and they told him that ILC is usually quite treatable.

Katie did call the doctor's office on Monday and they told her that her treatment would likely be a  mastectomy and reconstructive surgery followed by chemotherapy and radiology.  She plans to have a double mastectomy so that she has less chance of recurrence and the reconstructive surgery will be done at the same time as the mastectomy.  Her surgery will take place sometime in mid April.  My brother and I plan to fly there to support her when she has her surgery.

I'm very worried about my sister and pray that she'll recover fully and quickly!  Also, since she and I come from the same gene pool, I can't ignore the increased possibility that I could get this cancer as well, especially since I've just recently started Hormonal Replacement Therapy (HRT). The research that I did revealed that Mammograms have a 79% sensitivity in detecting ILC, whereas Breast Specific Gamma Imaging (BSGI) has a 93% sensitivity, which is much better.  Here are Mammogram and. BSGI images of ILC:

Mammogram vs. BSGI Imaging of ILC

As you can see, the BSGI images show the ILC much clearer than the Mammogram images. 

As such, I made an appointment with my PCP for this Friday to discuss if HRT.increases the risk for me to develop ILC.  Also, since I have yearly mammograms and my last one in July 2012,  I want to ask her to order a BSGI test for me as soon as possible. 

My sister's illness is another case in point of how fragile life can be!  We all really need to try not to sweat the small stuff and live each day like it is our last one on earth!

God please bless my sister and make her well!