And when you're 15 feeling like there's nothing to figure out, well

The Oncotype results came back earlier than expected!

My score out of 100 is 15.

The medical oncologist called to tell me, and I could hear the smile in her voice. A score under 25, she'd said, would mean no chemo. So no chemo!

Happy happy dance!

My gosh, I needed this good news!

So then I spoke with my radiation oncologist, who said, yes, great news that my score, being under 18, does not automatically mean radiation! 

But we still might want to do radiation.

Oh.

She reminded me that it's a grey area, where there isn't much data. It's not clear what would be best.

Basically, it's up to me how to proceed.

Up. To. Me.

I decide? (ME??)

This gave me the same feeling I had when the midwife asked Nick if he'd like to catch the baby.

And I was all, "No! What does he know? I want someone who knows what they're doing to catch my baby!"

I mean, this was the man they'd recently sent to stand up near my head because he made fun of me for pooping on the delivery table. 

They were all, "You don't get to stand down here anymore."

I told this to Leigh today when we spoke about the results and how I need to decide what I am going to do. She loves math and statistics, so I texted her the numbers that my doctor went through with me.

My chance of recurrence is 5–10%
Radiation reduces this to 2–5%

However.

Possibility of damage to heart is 1% or less
Possibility of damage to lungs is 1–3%

Also, radiation will shrink and harden the implant on that side, although to what extent varies person to person. And the surrounding tissue will tighten, possibly to an uncomfortable or painful extent. Or not.

This could mean more surgery. Or not.

It can also cause lymphedema and cording. This happened to a good friend of mine.

But might not happen to me. Bodies react differently.

So when I told Leigh the parameters for the Oncotype test, and how it's for my specific and very common type of breast cancer, she totally understood and tried to explain how they'd use data sets and modeling to be able to predict outcomes with a high degree of accuracy. You could hear the enthusiasm in her voice.

Then we talked about how 5% doesn't seem high...but 10% does.

So then I said, "But there's also this 1% chance of heart damage. So if you minus the 1 from the 5–10, it's more like 4–9..."

And she said, "Let me stop you there. Because that is definitely not how the numbers work."

"Oh."

"Yeah. You don't get to stand down there anymore."

Good thing I'm a writer and not a nuclear scientist.