My mom had a follow-up today with her doctor to get her stitches removed and talk about her test results. I don’t really know how to sum this up, but basically, the story is that the surgeon removed the entire tumor bed and everything around it tested negative, which is great. But they also run tests on the extra tissue that the plastic surgeon removes when he does the reduction. And unfortunately, when that came back from the pathologist, they found a whole other cancer against her chest wall.

On the one hand, it’s good that they found it, because it’s so small (only 0.9 centimeters) and so far back, it could’ve been years before it showed up on a mammogram. And by that point, it might’ve been stage 3 instead of stage 1. But at the same time, are you kidding me? She just went through all this, and now she has to start over? WTF?

So she’s going back on Tuesday for a full mastectomy, and reconstructive implant. She isn’t sure yet if she’s going to have a preventative mastectomy of the other breast or not, she’s going to wait to discuss that with her doctor. She has a really good attitude about it, she says that she feels like she’s still in recovery mode, so the idea of starting over doesn’t seem so bad. She says she thinks it was divine intervention that this was found when it was.

My dad, on the other hand, is really freaked out and pissed off. They’ve been married for almost 38 years, and he’s 10 years older than her, and I think the idea that she might not be around scares the bejeezus out of him. So I’m almost more worried about him at this point.

My sister was supposed to head back to NYC on Wednesday, but since my mom’s surgery will be on Tuesday, she’s bumped her flight until Sunday the 16th. I still wish I was there, but there isn’t really anything I can do about that. I’ll be there two weeks from today as it is.

Somebody pass the ibuprofen. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to stop grinding my teeth at this point.