The Beginning

April 14, 2015 (email to Jamie’s family)
A few of you have asked for some updates from recent drs. visits so here you go.
Allison-So we found out today that Allison has breast cancer. At the very least, this will mean more surgery and chemo. We meet with the docs Thursday morning to discuss option

April 16, 2015
All,
So we talked with our general surgeon who did the original lump removal/biopsy here at Fort Knox this morning and got a copy of the pathology report from the pathology center.
Allison has Infiltrating ductal carcinoma, Grade 3 (which is not good—it means the cell don’t resemble normal cells and are more likely to spread), positive margins (cancer cells come to the edge of the tissue biopsied—more surgery needed). They said they can’t give us what stage it is at yet. They said the size they see was about 11mm (1.1 cm)–which is pretty good.
She was hormone receptor positive for both estrogen & progesterone which supposedly is good because you can do something to treat the cancer cells’ growth.
She was HER2-receptor positive which supposedly is neither good or bad.
We plan on doing all treatment about an hour away at U of L’s James Graham Brown Cancer Center.
The next step is to go down there for a breast MRI which is used to gather more information about the area in the breast then determine what needs to be done. We were told that it is pretty likely that whatever path of treatment that is chosen that they will recommend chemo.
So that’s where we are for now.