Axillary Ultrasound and Consultation

When I showed up for my Ultrasound, the tech actually asked me what she was supposed to be ultrasounding. I was relieved, because I was still wondering if I was going to have to convince her to ultrasound my axilla and NOT my nonexistent breast. She didn't seemed too surprised to be ultrasounding my axilla, but after taking a few pictures of my swollen area, she did leave to go talk to the doctor. This kind of freaked me out (and she was gone a long time), because part of me was convinced that was bad news. It was just hard not to think that after my last ultrasound of a lump turned out to be picturing my breast cancer. In reality, I really think the tech was planning to ultrasound my breast and when I told her axilla, she probably didn't know exactly what kind of shots the doctor was looking for, so she was just doing a thorough job and verifying she was getting the doctor what he needed.

The ultrasound pictures showed my swollen area as this huge black void with nothing inside. The edges were very smooth and defined, which we later were told is an excellent indication of a benign (noncancerous) situation.

We then went to meet with the General Surgeon. He was very nice and informative. He even asked details about my breast cancer, and told me he knows Mayo did a fine job, but he would have handled my situation just a little more cautiously. He said he would have removed more lymph nodes (on the right side, where my cancer was noninvasive, and Mayo didn't take out any lymph nodes) and he would have taken out just a tiny bit more of the breast tissue. My surgeon at Mayo had gone thru with me why he was choosing to do things the way he did, and I was (still am) comfortable with how he did the surgery. The minuscule increase in risk of breast cancer recurrence was not enough to offset the other risks taken by removing extra lymph nodes and tissue. I think this surgeon in GF may have been a little more risk adverse in a breast cancer situation, since his wife has battled breast cancer twice in the last 9 years.

We reviewed our ultrasound images with the General Surgeon in GF and he was very relieved to see the images looked very convincing we are dealing with a fluid filled pocket which is residual from my mastectomy surgery and lymph node dissection. He actually left the room for a few minutes to go consult with a Radiologist to get his/her opinion on my situation. The Radiologist's opinion was watchful waiting for three months, but the Surgeon just wasn't that comfortable with that idea. He said he would like to aspirate the pocket and send it to pathology just to verify. He said the procedure is so simple and riskless that it would be foolish to not do (considering I had breast cancer) the verification that we are not dealing with a spread of my breast cancer.

So we go back to GF on Monday to do the axillary aspiration of the fluid filled pocket. It should be a very simple procedure lasting less then fifteen minutes.