Drive-thru Surgery

I'm not sure why people keep demanding that health care needs to become more efficient. If Karen's surgery on Wednesday was any indication, Penn has got the efficiency thing figured out. This was as close as it comes to drive-thru surgery. Karen was swiftly whisked through the process: prep at 6:15 am...surgery at 7:30 am, out to recovery at 8:30 am and headed home to Harrisburg by 10:30 am (the early hour left no time for the beauty mask that preceded the last surgery) In fact, the four-hour round trip from Harrisburg was as long as the hospital visit itself. But we're not complaining, the care was still first-rate. From Artis the funny and irreverent receptionist who greeted us when we arrived to Karen's surgeon, Dr. Tchou. Though quick and efficient, we were happy to get back home.

Though Karen wouldn't want me to characterize the "re-excision" as uneventful....thankfully, it was (no scary side effects like her last visit). But having someone chip away at your breast tissue and chest muscle (just enough so that Dr. Tchou can prove that the cancer has not spread to the chest wall), is no fun. A re-excision is a procedure to re-open the lumpectomy incision to remove more breast tissue. If you've been reading this blog, you might know that the first surgery failed to get "clean margins" around the cancer. In other words, there were some cancer cells left behind (they're hard to find). So, Dr. Tchou went back for more. We now wait until next week to get the pathology report to confirm that the breast tissue -- and the chest wall -- are free of cancer. That doesn't necessarily mean that Karen is "cancer free". Oh, if only surgery could do the job. People ask why, if the surgery removes the cancer, why Karen needs chemotherapy. If just one cancer cell travelled outside her breast tissue and made its way to some other place in Karen's body, it could quickly divide and grow. So, chemo is like insurance...just in case there's still some cancer lurking elsewhere.