What comes next.......

So, on May 9th, 2007, they tell me that I have to go to the one place that I have been afraid of as long as I have lived in Western NY -
Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

I actually have to walk into the building and see a doctor there. I have become a patient at a cancer hospital. (WHAT?! Are you kidding??) I use to want to WORK there, but I never,ever wanted to be a PATIENT there!! Just walking through the double doors is the scariest feeling I have ever had. I keep waiting for someone to come up to me and say, "you just got PUNK'D," and have all of this be over!
It hasn't happened......

After going through registration and receiving my "green card", which has since become my new identity, I have to go to the Breast Center and sit in a room and just look around. It feels like the cancer is growing inside of me while I wait. The fear is overwhelming and I want to get up and RUN out of there as fast as I can! I see women with thinning hair, bald women, women with yellowish skin, skinny women, young and old. Thank God that Janeen is there with me to lighten the load and receive all the information for me, because I sit and vision myself as one of these women. It is all I can do! "Breast Cancer, Breast Cancer, Breast Cancer" still floating through my mind.
They put us in a room and a nurse practitioner, Karen Furlani, comes in and talk to us and give me a breast exam. She was very nice, and very informative. She answered every question Janeen had. Then I meet the doctor assigned to my case, Swati Kulkarni, MD. She comes in, gives me a breast exam, tells me to get dressed and has us meet her in a seperate room. She then comes in and tells me the results of my pathology...........
Left Breast Biopsy, 7 o'clock: ductal carcinoma, invasive.
Estrogen receptor 65% positive. favorable >5%
Progesterone receptor 75% positive. favorable >5%
Her2/Neu 2+ weakly positive.
What, exactly, does it mean?? YA GOT ME!
She might as well have been speaking in tongues because I heard her say 3 words and POOF.............nothing, except "breast cancer".
Next thing I know she tells me to go to checkout and someone will give me my next appointment date for an MRI and pre-surgical testing............