It's been a tough, shitty week for my girlfriends. Here is an update from Barb (an excerpt from an e-mail she sent to let us all know about the pathology report)

"...They did find a cancerous mass in my breast even though it did not show up in the PET scan or the MRI, they also found cancer metastasized to one of my lymph nodes. Even though we saw none of this on these reports, microscopically they found it during my pathology from surgery. What does it mean? Well, it means I still have cancer in my body and lymphatic system. The very best news was that the surgeon got the mass from my breast out with all clean margins. The surgeon said that surgery went well, but we are at the point I was when diagnosed. I have a bad form of cancer that grows and spreads rapidly...so now it is up to the next chemo and radiation to see what happens.

I think I had fooled myself into thinking that the cancer had been eradicated, but now I know I am back to the fight I was originally at diagnosis. I can do it, but it does take its toll. When you start losing body parts and have things change on your body, you are not the fully formed fighter you started out as. I am not feeling sorry for myself, I am just very depleted at this point."


We are all feeling a tad blown out. But that's okay, we're resilient. If we can put up with men our whole lives, we can manage cancer, damn it. We have a girl gang party set for next week. Laura will be visiting from Alabama. The alcohol will flow, the expletives will fly and we will all feel better because we are together in one place and that seems to matter a lot right now.