A few weeks ago, Wendi found a lump that was a bit concerning, so she called the flight surgeon who wanted to take a look. The flight doc wasn’t too concerned, but ordered a mammogram anyway out at Landstuhl. Landstuhl is a large Army regional hospital in the area. It handles most of the medical issues for soldiers ‘down-range’ in Afghanistan and all over Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
On Tuesday, April 1st, we went into radiology. The docs were great at Landstuhl and were very honest, saying that “it didn’t look good.” One of them is in our ward and we went into his office where he told us in his opinion, it was a 95% chance of cancer. It was quite a shock and was hard to process and get our heads around. He and I gave Wendi a blessing right there in his office. They took a biopsy, which was quite painful and difficult for Wendi. Not a good day. We just had to wait around now for the pathology results.
Our Ramstein flight surgeon recommended that we talk to the Landstuhl general surgeon about options, despite not having the results from the biopsy, so we went in on Thursday. We were in the general surgeon’s office at Landstuhl when Wendi’s phone rang. I answered the call from the radiology department with the pathology results. They didn’t know that we were right there in the hospital down the hall. The radiologist confirmed what we feared – Wendi has stage 2 breast cancer that has spread to at least one of the lymph nodes. They had only biopsied the one, so not sure at this point how extensive it is. Since we were right there with the surgeon already, he took a look at the results and came back in to talk about options.
It is ‘invasive ductal carcinoma’ which is the most common type of breast cancer. He said that generally, the treatment plan would include surgery to remove the lump (which measures about 3.5cm diameter at the longest point) and most of the lymph nodes, then follow up with chemotherapy.
As for removing the lump, it could be a lumpectomy, to remove the lump and surrounding tissue followed by radiation, or it could be a mastectomy to remove the entire breast, which would eliminate the requirement for radiation. Neither option sounds great, but we’re leaning toward the mastectomy. Apparently, they have all the treatment options right here at Landstuhl.
We will go in next week on Friday to get a chest x-ray. I should mention too, that she had blood work done on Wednesdaythat came back normal for white cell count in other areas of the body, so that was good news.
It was a difficult day yesterday, but Wendi is doing OK. She is scared, nervous and worried, of course, but we are all trying to be strong and supportive. It was hard to get the kids together and tell them what we now know. The crazy thing is, we are in England. We’ve had this trip planned for quite some time, but weren’t sure what to do as things developed this week. Since we can’t really do anything about it for at least a week, all the medical people were fine with us going. Wendi and I debated, but if we are going to worry about it sitting at home, or have somewhat of a distraction out here, we decided to leave as planned.
We’ve had some good time to talk and think out here, but we won’t be able to call any of you until later next week. We will have email access. We are visiting Jared and Adri, our cadet friends from the Academy who are stationed at Lakenheath in England. It may be the last trip we take for a while, so we are trying to enjoy it a little.
This obviously throws every plan and timeline up in the air. We are concerned about Jenna’s graduation, school, weddings, moving kids into college, a daughter on a mission, treatment options in Germany, moving to the States, medical coverage implications of being a Reservist, etc.
We very much appreciate all of your love and support. It’s comforting knowing the prayers offered on our behalf and the loving concern out there for Wendi. She is such a great woman!
-- Mark Kirchhoefer
