I mean, I was thinking the best news would be if they looked at the mass and found cancer cells all tucked away neatly inside of it with huge clean margins all around.
Instead, though, they found no cancer cells. At all.
They looked at it multiple times and made lots of slides and basically chopped the mass all up looking for those spindle cells that the first biopsy results had shown - and found nothing.
I didn't even know how to feel when I heard that. First I felt relief that the worst hadn't happened - cancer cells left behind that would have been too deep for amputation to even be an option. Then I felt....&$%&$*%@*#&$@%*&#$*&$%*&#WTF. I put Abby through a major surgery in which she lost most of her gracilis muscle and a nerve and part of her adductor muscle and there WEREN'T ANY CANCER CELLS? The surgeon said there was a definite 'mass effect' going on and I agree - I felt that mass. We all felt that mass! He isn't sure why it was there - maybe it was some strange muscle sprain. To make myself feel better I tell myself maybe there was the very beginning of a tumour and that's why those spindle cells were found, and the biopsies after surgery just didn't find those cells because there weren't many yet.
I do know, though, that based on the series of events and on the information I had, I had no other options. Even if I had opted to do another pre-surgery biopsy and that hadn't found spindle cells, I wouldn't have trusted those results since the first results did show spindle cells. I basically wouldn't have trusted any other test after that first positive biopsy so my only option was to have the mass removed.
The most important part is that Abby is healthy and is healing well from her surgery. The incision looks great and her staples come out tomorrow. Her leg isn't swollen anymore and she would be running around if I let her. She seems to be putting full weight on it and she is able to jump and stand on her hind legs (although that isn't supposed to be happening at this stage of recovery!). So I'm still hopeful that she'll have almost full function of her leg.
What a mess of a roller coaster all of this has been. Can we pretend the new year starts in February please?
