My oncologist, Dr Mates, is a tiny Romanian lady, but before you get the picture of the wizened old lady with the big scarf tied under her chin, she is tiny but quite young.
We did the usual history, ad nauseum. She then talked quite candidly about breast cancer and when it metastitizes. In this case, they are pretty certain that it is breast cancer though it could be a cancer of the female organs, in that the cells had both estrogen and progesterone. It is weird that these cells have shown up in my arm and nowhere else. It could be that they started in the breast and didn't like their home so moved on to another location (hey SFA! They swarmed!!). But it is good that we don't see other spots. She is going to start me on a medication called "tamoxifen" which suppresses estrogen, basically starving the cells. I would then have to go onto another med which is used by people worried about osteoarthritis. She is presenting my case to her panel of colleagues on Tuesday morning, and the pathologist who read my slides from the second surgery will be there with the slides. If anybody has an alternate suggestion for my case, they will discuss it. Otherwise, she will call in my prescription and get me started on it. She is also looking at radiation for my arm, but needs to wait until the antibiotics course is done. She says that statistics on survival for this type of cancer really don't reflect my circumstances, so I am not going to look at them and try to make them fit. I will see her fairly regularly, but not until after the antibiotics are done. In the meantime, I will be sent for another MRI (there had better be better dope this time!) and I will see a gynecologist at the clinic. This clinic has everything, there are social workers and nutritionists, and many support elements. It looks like its very well developed.
My nurse came in and backed up a lot that Dr. Matis had said. She says that the drug is good, if it works, for precisely 5 years. Then they have to change it. But she remarked on how far this kind of research will have gone in 5 yrs.
So its good news, mostly. A lot easier to take when the person giving the info seems to be involved with you, caring about you.
