Tuesday, March 1, 2011

"No visual residual tumor."

I got the report from my last breast MRI. Here's what it said with my comments inserted:

"No abnormal enhancement is visualized in the right breast. Susceptibility artifact from biopsy clip in the central breast is noted. [A susceptibility artifact is just bright or dark areas of spatial distortion on the MRI image that occur as the result of variations in the magnetic field strength due to the presence of a substance of different magnetic susceptibility. Simply put, the little metal marker clip they inserted in the tumor before all my treatment began was causing some minor distortions in the images in the area directly surrounding it.]  The findings are consistant with response to neoadjuvant [this fun word just means that the chemo came before surgery]chemotherapy, with no visible residual tumor.

That last part is my favorite. Again, that doesn't mean that the Cancer is completely gone on a cellular level (though here's hoping that it is), just that there is no visual trace of it on a MRI. WooHOOO! So now I just need the pathology report after surgery to come back clean and we can skip radiation, move on to reconstruction and be done with this for a while.

I have a consult with my plastic surgeon in a couple of days (now there is something that I never thought I'd have to say) so I'll get a little more information about next steps then.

4 comments:

Sarah said...

That is great news Marie!

Unknown said...

double WHOOO HOOOO!!!! Great news Marie! Keep it comin'!

Ellen said...

I'm so happy for you!

Liz said...

Great! Good for you!