...and the results:

Had my hospital appt this afternoon to get the results of the tumour analysis. Bit of a mixed bag really but as the surgeon said, no major surprises.

The good news for me is that they are confident the diseased tissue was well within what they removed, so there is no obvious risk of it touching onto the next area it could travel to. The tumour itself was 500mm which is quite large - considering the fact that I couldn't at any stage right up to surgery detect an obvious lump. I wouldn't put anyone off checking for lumps but I would encourage anyone too young to be in the screening programme (starts age 50-53) to be persistent if they have breast pain or any strange changes to the nipple and get referred for a mammogram! There was also a surrounding area of pre-cancerous tissue which took the lump to 700mm.

The less good news is that of 17 lymph nodes on the gland they removed from my left arm, all 17 contained cancerous cells. So that means that the chemo will definitely be followed by radiotherapy. The chemo will start in about 6 weeks if I have recovered enough and am fit and up to it. This will be once every 3 weeks for about 5/6 months and will be at St George's. I have an appt in two weeks time to confirm the type of chemo and other details. Then there will be a gap of a couple of weeks before radiotherapy, which will be 5 days a week for 5 weeks at the Marsden in Fulham. There is also a further MRI scan I need to have to check out some uncertainty about spread to the liver from a previous scan, so I'm hoping there's nothing ominous lurking there.

Other than that I had 200mls of serum drained off my back so I no longer feel as though someone has inserted a hot water bottle under my skin and am not wobbling like a waterbed! Not the best form of weight loss...

And my sister is here now so I'm going to sign off. Still recovering well from the general.

If anyone wants to pop round during the afternoon tomorrow or the day on Friday feel free to text me and hopefully I should be well up to it.

And finally a huge thank you to Tony, Anne-Marie's husband, for coming and fixing my boiler for me so promptly and working on it so late in the evening!