Facts found...

Well that was worth the effort of driving to the hospital!

It seems that the radiotherapy is standard procedure when they perform a "Wide Local Excision" ("Lumpectomy") rather than a mastectomy - if they are going to leave any breast tissue behind they like to give it a good old blast to make sure it behaves itself in future... The most common period of treatment is three or maybe four weeks, every weekday. The treatment itself takes about 2 minutes, is painless and won't make my hair fall out. The side-effects are tiredness and occasional sunburn-like symptoms, but as a general rule these are not too debilitating. The downside of this phase is that it can't be done at the local hospital - I have to go to Brighton. Every blooming day for three or four weeks. That will be dull, especially as it will be over the winter holiday period, when the weather is poor and the world wants to go shopping... Hey ho. I am assured that I will be fit to drive myself there and back, so at least I don't have to drag himself out of work every day.

I also now have an appointment for the next MRI scan. It seems that this particular consultant has a habit of marking all his scan requests as "urgent", so there is nothing to be read into that. The MRI will give a full 3-d picture of the tumour so that the surgeon can plan what he is going to do properly. The scan will be done on Thursday 28th of October, and the results will be ready in time for the team meeting the following Wednesday - I am to phone the breast care nurses' office after 2.30pm that day so that they can book my appointment to see the surgeon to organise the surgery. That will take place some time a couple of weeks later, and I will probably be in hospital for about four or five days. At some point I will see the oncologist again to organise the radiotherapy, which will fill up the rest of the year nicely!

And after that? Well, that will be it, mostly, or so it seems!
Actually it's not quite that simple. I got some other results today too. It seems that the tumour is "HER-2 Negative" - this means that drugs like Herceptin will have no benefit to me. This is apparently one of those "good in parts" details - it's an avenue of treatment which isn't open to me, as it won't do me any good, but on the other hand tumours which are HER-2 positive can be more aggressive, so I am glad overall that it isn't.
Another thing that they worry about is the amount of influence that oestrogen has on the tumour. There is a scale of how "oestrogen-driven" the tumour is, which starts at 0 and goes to - don't know really, but I gather that 8 is considered high. Mine is apparently 3 on this scale, suggesting that there is some influence of oestrogen but not a huge amount. Oestrogen still appears in the body even after the menopause, so all my hot flushes won't remove the risk of oestrogen being in my body, so it seems that they will likely give me oestrogen-suppressing drugs - probably Tamoxifen - for five years or so. This should reduce the chances of anything recurring or restarting.

I also now have the number for the lady at our local Citizens' Advice Bureau who works for Macmillan and understands the benefits system, so I will be giving her a call in the morning. If I can get to a point where I can put the job hunt on hold for a few weeks and concentrate on recovering from this little problem, I think that would be a Good Thing.

So, all in all, some progress, lots of information and at least I can plan and schedule my life a little. Hurrah for that!

Now all I need is the energy to arrange something for supper. Yesterday's supper went down well, I was all set for a happy evening in watching the Terry Pratchett dvd I gave himself for his birthday - and then he suddenly said "so are you ready to go out then?" and off we went to the local 2CV owner's club - not quite the quiet evening I had planned but fun nevertheless. I do hope there are no surprises tonight!