5/15 – Final Pathology…

Unfortunately, the pathology on the removal did not come back with clear margins. They had clear margins on the bottom, but the top was “still involved.” So.. they are going to need to take some more skin. We scheduled the surgery on 6/3 to hopefully take the remaining “involved” skin.

The kicker is that they are worried it’s too much skin to do the reconstruction as before, so my plastic surgeon needs to be involved. My Oncologist originally proposed her taking the skin and having my plastic surgeon do the reconstruction at the same time, but I wasn’t keen on this as I didn’t plan to do the reconstruction yet.

I met with my Plastic surgeon, and a few things:
– They deflated my left boob, to loosen the skin so the Oncologist can remove what is needed, and close the wound (I’m now rocking two different size boobs)
– After the removal we will see how tight the skin is. I asked to try to re-expand the skin slowly after that to then do the implants, but the plastic surgeon said in his experience radiated skin can’t be expanded.
– If we can’t re-expand the skin he is recommending a Latissimus Flap reconstruction, where they get skin (and muscle as a blood source) from my back to “plug the hole.” My surgeon thinks this will look the best and allow both sides to match etc. He said you don’t want it to be too tight as I won’t be able to have full movement of my arm. This would require two surgeries – one to do the Flap (another drain would be needed) and another to put in the implants.

So with that said, I’m not crazy about all of this, especially taking the flap. It means 2 more surgeries, more recovery – especially if you’re taking the back muscle and more scars both on my back and boob. At this point though, one step at a time. We’re just going to remove the cancer on 6/3 with the simple surgery (the same one I already did) and then go from there and see how it heals.