Terrorist Cells
The picture of exactly what Holly’s cancer looks like is starting to develop more fully. First, it turns out that fighting Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) is trickier than we first thought. If you will allow me the liberty of an analogy here…
Fighting other types of cancer with a large easy to identify tumor is like fighting a traditional war. The enemy is easy to find, it’s just a matter of picking the right weapon to kill them.
In contrast, fighting DCIS is like fighting terrorists. The operate in small (ironically named) cells that are hard to identify, and therefore kill.
What does that mean for how we go forward? It means that even if the alternative medicine methods we are trying work, there’s no way to definitively know it. The test simply aren’t that sensitive. The mammogram can detect calcium deposits which sometimes, but not always, hang out with cancer. The MRI can detect increased blood flow to an area, but by no means detect it at cellular level.
Besides knowing the nature better of what we are fighting, we also learned more details out of the pathology report. It turns out that the DCIS Holly has is “High Nuclear Grade.”
Here’s how one website explains what that may mean:
There are three grades of DCIS: low, intermediate, and high. The grade relates to how the cells look under the microscope, and gives an idea of how quickly the cells may develop into an invasive cancer (or how likely it is that the DCIS will come back after surgery). Low-grade DCIS has the lowest risk of developing into an invasive cancer, and high-grade carries the greatest risk.
Here’s another one says (it also gives a much more technical explanation of how they determine the grades):
Cancers with a high grade, necrosis, cancers close to the surrounding margin of breast tissue of a lumpectomy sample, or large areas of DCIS are more likely to recur after breast cancer treatment than other breast cancers.
So, obviously neither of these pieces of information are good news. Stack on the fact that just getting breast cancer so young increase the chances of recurrence substantially. So, Holly still has the best kind of breast cancer to have — it’s just the worst kind of the best kind.
We’ve been discouraged about this this weekend. While we have been praying and wondering what this means about how we move forward we have found great comfort in Psalm 147:3-5:
He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars;
he gives to all of them their names.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;
his understanding is beyond measure.
Thanks for sticking through a long post. Continued prayers for wisdom are appreciated.
