The Pains of Waiting - Excited and Anxious

I never knew that you could be so excited to receive a piece of news, yet anxious and fearful at the same time. Mitch keeps reminding me how important it is to be patient. I don’t think I can practice patience at this time Not knowing the next step dominates my mind. But I do have better times than others. Knowledge, even bad knowledge, brings back a sense of control in a new world where things seem to be so often out of my control or grasp.

Two weeks after my surgery (January 2^nd) Mitch went with me to see my oncologist for my appointment that was scheduled by my oncologist’s office. I thought for sure that at this appointment that I would know my Oncotype DX score. Dr Wong had talked about ordering this after we had the tumor out. I didn’t realize that they can’t order it at the time of surgery, but can only be ordered after the tumor is done in pathology. They have to send the tumor off to Genonic Health, a company which specializes in this. They will determine a score that gives me a chance of recurrence without chemo. It determines a recurrence score and the benefits of chemotherapy. Since my Her2 by IHC results were equivocal they send it to get HER2 by FISH. This test came back as indeterminate. There is some formula that with these ratings they don’t recommend chemo. So I knew from our conversation before surgery that Dr Wong would order the Oncotype text to use as a “tie breaker”. In addition he mentioned that he would like another pathologist to look at the tumor for another opinion. Since my cancer in the 2 CM tumor is stage 3 (the most aggressive rating for stages) that he felt suspicious that I may still need chemo. When he told me that it would be a couple more weeks, my heart sank and I felt kind of angry. I thought that they did the Oncotype test in the same lab where they evaluated the tumor. That was hard news to handle. It has now been over three weeks since that appointment with Dr. Wong. If I had known at the time that I would have to wait even longer, I think I would have gone into a deep depression. Waiting is so hard. A different kind of pain that the physical pain with breast surgery, but even more difficult in many ways. For some reason there was a delay with the testing company thinking they needed a pre-approval. When I found out I was able to arrange for insurance to call them direct to clear it up. That was late yesterday. So lets hope it is really cleared up. I don’t know at this time if they have actually done the testing or if they still need to test it. So the waiting continues. I have a new breast navigator (Jennifer Glover) who made some calls to help figure out what was holding it up. So the waiting continues.