Update on the suckage
What a crappy day. I was sitting in front of my pc, all set to spend a bit of time writing and catching up with Speesh on her Egypt trip and I got a call from my retarded sister. We got into a huge fight about how my questioning my mother's doctor on the procedure he's planning is undermining my mother's confidence in him. Am I supposed to give a shit about that? I read up on some stuff, especially the stuff that Hal gave me, thanks for that Hal, and it only reinforced my reservations. My mother has DCIS, ductile carcinoma in situ, meaning a potentially cancerous, or pre-cancerous growth within a single duct in the breast. It's not invasive, they found nothing outside the perimeter of the tumor to alarm them, he is taking the breast just in case. Now he has my mom convinced that if she doesn't have the entire breast removed she will be jeapordizing her health. Now, I'm fine if she want's to get the breast removed for her piece of mind, but my concern is that they are going to biopsy the lymph nodes for no damn good reason. My mom is 72 years old, it will be difficult enough for her to recover from mastectomy surgery, on top of that, I don't think she needs to risk all of the possible ramifications of damaging the lymph node, not the least of which is that god awful swelling it causes. I have a friend whose daughter had to have a chest tube put in for a collapsed lung when she was born and they knicked the lymph node in the process. It's awful what that poor kid goes through because of it. Like I said, my mom is 72 years old and I think along with quantity, they should be giving equal consideration to quality. I don't think this doctor is doing this, I think he's in the ten years of remission mind-set and nothing is going to divert him. Now my mom has been talking to my sister and she's terrified that if she doesn't have her entire chest cavity massacred by this asshole, she's going to die next week. FFS!!!!!!!!!! The cancer's not even invasive. I think part of the problem is that we just had a friend die of lung cancer two weeks after his diagnosis, it was a terrible, painful, horrifying ordeal and I think that's what has her scared, but I can't convince her no matter how much I say, how many articles I quote or how much I beg, that her cancer is nothing like what our friend had.
A very very very long and tiring and stressful day. Thanks everyone for all your input, I love you all for supporting me. I don't know what to do though. should I just give up and let it go? It's my mom, I hate the idea that's she's going to allow herself to be put through such an enormous amount of agony without even allowing anyone to say, hey, wait a minute, explain to me why this is a good idea.