11.23.2010

bad news

A good friend of mine from work just found out yesterday that she has breast cancer. The doctor called her at work and I happened to be the one who looked up and realized she was hearing very bad news. My friend didn't really believe the doctor - after all she'd just had a clean mammogram in September. Everything had all happened really quickly, beginning with a chance comment to a doctor in a follow-up visit.

She was reeling from all the information the doctor had tried to convey but did manage to figure out that it was lobular carcinoma and she thought the doctor had something about inflammation. I looked up lobular carcinoma which is a rarer type of breast cancer but just a difference of location (tissue vs. the ducts). It wasn't until this morning when I was looking on the Susan G. Komen site that I found inflammatory. And it is so not good. Apparently inflammatory breast cancer is a particularly evil version that develops very quickly and spreads very aggressively. It is automatically classified as stage IIIB or IV and the prognosis is "very poor" which explains why  the doctor was saying things to her about "getting her things in order" which I thought was just bad bedside manner.

Ugh. I have so much to do in the next two weeks as school wraps up - but all I can do is stare at the screen. This is such bad news.