The past month has been particularly awful for me, mental health wise. To put it mildly, I haven't exactly been dealing well with my upcoming boob replacement. I lost all desire to write, or even just talk, about what happened. I don't even have much desire to transcribe all the recent fun, but I'm forcing myself to do it. I figure that I'll want to start complaining to the internet soon enough, and without backstory, it won't make sense. So now, without further ado, what went wrong!

Way back in March, Dr. Surgeon scooped out some boob. That piece of boob was then chopped up and dyed and poked and prodded. For simplicity's sake, let's say it was spherical. The entire piece is surrounded by some amount of margin. In a perfect world, the every cell in the margin would be analyzed. Alas, that's not possible, so the guys in lab coats typically take six samples and look at them. Since a sphere does not actually have six sides like a cube does, the sites that are chosen with some degree of randomness. It is that randomness that screwed me.

The sides that were chosen on my scoop came back negative for cancer. Dr. Oncologist postulated that if thirty sides were tested, they would have found at least one that was positive. But they didn't, so the end result was a false negative. The surgery was deemed successful, and I was subjected to chemo.

Prior to starting radiation, it is standard to take before images for a variety of reasons. My images showed very tiny pre-cancerous calcifications. Their size and location indicated that they had been their all along, and that they were so small they escaped being sampled.

After the second lumpectomy, the margins of the scoop were checked. This time, the positive cells did not elude the lab technicians. Unclear margins mean more surgery.

Prior to the second operation, I was informed that regardless of the results, this would be my last lumpectomy. Clear margins would also mean it was my last operation. Unclear margins, well, like I said, it was the last lumpectomy. In other words, I'm now in mastectomy land.

Shockingly, mastectomy land is filled with a gaggle of doctors, otherwise known as those things I'm totally sick of seeing in those buildings I'm sick of visiting. And I promise to tell you all about it next time.