Tuesday, 16-Sep-2008
Met with Dr. Moran who had the results of the Cancer Conference. Dr. Antel had done a lot more digging and presented his information. The general consensus of the Dr.s attending was that we should not do radiation therapy in this case. The Pet and MRI scans showed good results but there was some indication of a presence of... something, which could still be cancer. We'll know more when the tissue is biopsied post surgery.
Based on this we're in the process of confirming the 10th of October as the date for the mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. We meet with the surgeons in the very near future to solidify these plans. To recap; the reconstruction is a tram flap surgery which means they will take tissue from Kris stomach to reconstruct her breast with. This also means we need to see Dr. Kuisle (the plastic surgeon) about a week in advance for an outpatient procedure which will restrict the blood flow to the tram flap tissue to a predetermined set of vessels. This is to make sure he can use those vessels during the reconstruction procedure.
According to Dr. Moran, Kris will likely go into surgery Friday the 10th, which will be 3 or 4 hours. She'll stay in the hospital likely until Sunday the 12th. I expect her to be on bed rest for a day or three after that, so, she might be ambulatory Wednesday. We'll know more after we talk with the surgeons.
Somewhat side news is that we've got some very bad news about our cats. Our youngest, Nikki who is exactly one year old, has been diagnosed with FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis). This disease is highly contagious and insidious in that there is no way to prevent it, nor detect it until it's full blown and it's always fatal. We will be putting Nikki down this morning and will have to watch the rest of our cats for the rest of their lives to see if they are infected. As time goes by and they are not symptomatic, the risk that they have the disease decreases. However, we can never know that they don't have it as the disease can lay dormant for years before expressing itself. Since our cats are strictly indoors and have never been socialized with other cats, the only likely source for infection is the cattery we purchased Nikki from. It's possible to have the disease transferred at a Vet, but, since Vets are aware of how devastating this disease is, they tend to be very careful and thus the odds of Nikki getting the disease from her recent visit there are very slim.
While I do not want any of you to get the impression that I don't care for our cats or that I'm being callous about this, my biggest concern is the impact of this on Kris. Stress is a known issue with triple negative breast cancer and this is the very definition of stressful.
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