Meet the Doctors

Hi Folks, this is Dave, not Holly. She asked me to update everyone with today's events.

Holly met her oncologist today for the first time. His name is Dr. Anthony Landis (see http://www.cancergwinnett.com/meet_the_doctors.htm for more details about him professionally). Based upon what we know today, Holly has Stage II breast cancer. The purpose of today's visit was to find out more about the Pathology of her cancer and the proposed treatment plan.

What we learned today was the following:

1. The tumor was positive for stimulation by both estrogen and progesterone. As a result, she will need to take Tamoxifen for the next 5 years. Tamoxifen is thought to block the effects of estrogen on breast cancer cells.
   
2. The HER2 IHC test was borderline, then repeated as a FISH test, but was still inconclusive. The doctor plans to repeat these tests using a different lab this time. It will be at least another week before we get results for this. A positive HER2 test would mean that Holly would need to go through some form of chemotherapy.
   
3. Regardless of the HER2 status, Holly will for sure go through Radiation therapy. She also met her radiation doctor today (Dr. John Gargus) and they discussed doing 33 rounds of treatment (which is about 7 weeks of radiation). It's just a question of will she need chemotherapy before the radiation or just the radiation.
   

Dr. Landis has the following now planned for Holly:

1. As mentioned previously, a different lab will re-run the HER2 tests on her tumor.
   
2. Dr. Landis mentioned something about having a HER MARK test run as well, though I have no information on that test.
   
3. Oncotype DX breast cancer assay -- see http://www.genomichealth.com/OncotypeDX for details.
   
4. A CT Scan, Brain MRI, and Bone Scan have been scheduled for next week.
   

And now, this is Holly finishing off this entry...I appreciate my sweet, technical-minded, detail-oriented husband so much, he does such a better job explaining this kind of stuff than I do! All in all, I'm very happy with my two new doctors and am glad they'll be close to home (near Gwinnett Medical Center).

Thanks to my neighbor, Joanne for watching Kyle this morning (he stayed home today from school, sick w/ allergy stuff) and to my niece who came down and spent the day to help out. Without this help, it would have been a very difficult day....

Signing off for now...

Holly, Dave (and the boys)