Folow-up with Oncologist & Tomorrow's Surgery Clarified

Today I had a follow-up with my oncologist and I'm thankful that God worked it out that way (follow-up with oncologist before tomorrow's surgery). My oncologist shared with us that the chemo had diminished the mass to only 2% of what it was intially (God-sized results! God caused the chemo to be effective-no doubt in my mind about that-when I went to get my port flushed by one of the chemo nurses she even said that she thought I was going to have to have a mastectomy-that just goes to show you, God always has the final say regardless of what man thinks and what things look like). He also explained that after surgery I would need to get back on hercepton & projeta to complete a total of a year (already have some months counted toward that year as these 2 were administered during my chemo treatments) and there is also no toxicity from them (so shouldn't have any side effects like I had during chemo), but they would need to keep an eye on my heart. I asked him about the radiation treatments too. While that is not his specialty, he was able to share that typically radiation is everyday for a duration of an average of 6wks. The reason I mentioned above that I was glad that I saw my oncologist today was because from the phone conversation that I had with the surgeon yesterday afternoon, the plan was to reomove all of the lymph nodes from under my arm. However my oncologist said that he wasn't so much concerned with the lymph nodes that were deep but more so the lymph nodes that were superficial because I would have radiation treatments following the surgery and there also tend to be complications when all of the lymph nodes are removed. We made a note to follow-up with the surgeon to make sure he knew that I did not want to have all lymph nodes removed. Daddy called him after the appointment but they told him that the surgeon was in surgery all day today, so he just asked that the surgeon call him back. Daddy called this evening fired up (in the Lord)! He prayed with and encouraged me. Also shared that the surgeon did call him back today. In the convo, the surgeon clarified that there are 3 levels of lymph nodes and he feels that since 2 of the 4 lymph nodes biopsied had cancer cells in them, it's absolutely necessary to remove level 1 & level 2 lymph nodes but was not going to be digging around in muscle (from the conversation it was implied that that's where the level 3 lymph nodes are located). I was thankful to hear that. The surgeon is still going to shave off a little more tissue in my breast as mentioned in the previous post. Another praise report-it was confirmed that I will not have to go through the pre-surgery procedures that I had to go through last time-no radioactive dye injections(the most painful part of last weeks surgery) and no wires being inserted into my breast-"aint God GOOD!".