Posted 2015-08-12T03:14:25Z

A day of good news – for me and the tree

After a long meeting with the breast surgeon today, a lot of things feel more settled, and I’m feeling quite relieved.

1) The tumor in the right breast (the one I felt that took me to the doctor last February, which was fast-growing) is COMPLETELY GONE! The one in the left breast, which was much trickier to find and hard to image, is inconclusive on the MRI results, but is at least a lot smaller, and what remains is likely to be DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ, which is not invasive and is the kind of breast “cancer” that they are beginning to take a “watch & wait” approach to rather than treat – and are even thinking of removing “carcinoma” from its name because it’s not clear that it ever spreads beyond the ducts in many cases).

2) Given the results of the MRI, the surgeon feels it is highly unlikely that there will be any cancer in my lymph nodes, and the odds of me getting metastatic cancer are significantly lower. She will check 2 or 3 sentinel nodes on each side during the surgery. If there is no cancer there, then that’s it, she sews me back up and I won’t need any radiation treatments!

3) I’m done with chemo!! Given the MRI results and how low my platelet counts were last week, they don’t think more chemo is going to do anything for me, and it’s better to get me more fully recovered and on to surgery.

4) Given that I’m done with chemo and feeling quite well already, we should be able to go visit Don’s dad as we’d hoped.

5) The surgery will be scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 3rd. I will likely have a 1-2 night stay in the hospital, and a couple of weeks of intensive recovery, followed by a couple more weeks before I’m able to return to all normal activities. Plus however long it takes me to get used to my new shape.

We also had an arborist come out today to look at our trees, especially the birch tree I’ve been meditating with and lying in the hammock under (see my entries of March 17th and April 12th). When we first moved in 11 years ago an arborist told us the birch tree would have to go soon. When we had him back a couple years later, he said he was surprised that it was holding its own more than he expected. Well, it’s been quite a few years since we’ve had it looked at (so long that we can’t remember who that arborist was!), and my closer attention to it this year made me realize that one of the three trunks is nearly completely dead. Though I love the tree more and more as I commune with it, I was concerned about the danger to us, our house, and our neighbor’s house and figured it was time to get it looked at again. Bill from H & H Arborists came out today and reassured me that he could remove the dying trunk and likely save the other two by injecting a relatively low-impact insecticide that would help it recover from the bronze-headed birch borer problem. We will of course have to research this, and we know this is only going to extend its life, not save it forever, but between the good news about my own prognosis and that of the tree, I’m feeling very grateful!!

While I was getting pretty good at living with both weakness and uncertainty, it is nice to be feeling both physically healthier and more solidly optimistic about my future. In fact, during tonight’s Snowflower Sangha meeting, which Don led on the topic of bodhicitta as a “BHAG,” a big, hairy, audacious goal for all beings to be enlightened and free from suffering, I started thinking seriously about my work in the world and how I want it to evolve over the next couple of decades. Maybe this is what they call a “new lease on life.”

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Becca Krantz 40 Comments

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Rebecca Krantz

A day of good news – for me and the tree

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