Meal Train® for The Wooster Family

Special Instructions

For those of you who know our family, we love to travel. It looks like my "journey" this year is taking me to a year long visit with breast cancer, not my destination of choice! I know I will be very busy during this time and am trying to figure out how to juggle it all, but I know that many of my loved ones will want updates and this is where I will post them. Be warned, since my children may view it, this is the cancer view with rose colored glasses. If you ever know anyone diagnosed with breast cancer and want a more candid/realistic perspective, email me after January10th and I am happy to share the more realistic version and provide any help I can. I have been making lists and checking it twice for all the breast cancer services in my area so I will have a lot of info to share : ) Too bad Santa can't bring all the help I need! A bit of background… No family history of breast cancer and am 45 years old. Like most women I have no symptoms, I didn't feel anything unusual. I always follow through on my medical appointments and every year since 40, have been getting regular mammograms. But this year…. at my annual exam, the pa felt my breast be a little "thicker" (no lump) and she encouraged me to get a mammogram ASAP. Sutter was incredibly accommodating, getting me an appointment that afternoon! That afternoon, had a mammogram that showed something abnormal, then, straight to the ultrasound and also saw something suspicious. By the time I was done everyone was gone for the day, but the tech there said I needed a biopsy ASAP and I told him I would make myself completely free the next day, anytime/any location and when I called at 8am that next day he had 2 different appointments saved for me. I have to say that when they suspect you have breast cancer, the whole medical appointments seems to go into hyper drive! Had the biopsy and the following week found out I have invasive lobular carcinoma which mine is very estrogen positive and very Progesterone positive and HER2 negative, all very typical of invasive lobular. It is often not seen on regular mammograms and if you have dense breasts you can't easily see the difference between this type of cancer and your dense breast tissue until the cancer gets sufficiently large. Ugh! It also tends to grow slowly but undetected, it also is a type of cancer that for some reason tends to metastasize. So, advice to ANYONE with dense breasts, get a 3D mammogram, please, please, please! Don't assume you will feel a lump or that a regular mammogram will work IF you have dense breasts. No one ever mentioned this to me UNTIL I got breast cancer. So, after that news, lots of researching and checked out several possible surgeons and medical centers. As this moment… Am going to Stanford Dec 19th for several appointments, staying in the Bay Area. Dec 20th- am having a bilateral mastectomy and most likely some nodes removed, they look suspicious! I hope to be home Dec 21st or 22nd if all goes according to plan. For those curious folks, I am having reconstruction with Dr. Nazarali at Stanford also and then in January I will find out if I need chemo, radiation and/or hormone therapy. The best news is that I don't have any genetic markers that are associated with breast cancer so that means Nikki doesn’t either!!! As you can imagine I am going to be super crazy busy so please email/text me instead of calling for updates as I would love to hear from you. I will ask Roland or Nikki to update my medical info as we can. If you are inclined to help, feel free to sign up for mealtrain, https://mealtrain.com/49ze02 (figure this out!)my dear friends Gade 916-221-0965 and Jessica 916-316-3281 set it up. While I won't need a lot of help in the beginning, Roland is taking some time off, it is likely I will later on and this is great organizational tool. I want my children to have a wonderful Christmas break.