Geiger Counter??

I finally felt ok enough to read over the notes that my two support people took during my 2 hour Dr. Trezona visit. I've been curious about the nuclear medicine procedure and I know the dr. talked at length about it, and all I remember is the term "sentinel node". As I was reading over the notes, I remember what happened- I was in information overload and as soon as he mentioned something about me being injected with radioactive material and him using a geiger counter to locate the node in which the radioactive stuff settled, I tuned out. I had this picture of an old Twilight Zone episode with guys in space suits holding huge geiger counters and walking through a nuclear waste land. When I tried to picture what my breasts had to do with this image, I couldn't reconcile the two so I went away somewhere. Thank God I had people taking notes. As I read through the notes, bits of what was said came back to me. The part I don't recall, but both sets of notes said, was that there is a possibility of a second surgery to remove lymph nodes, based on the results of this nuclear medicine procedure. I won't know about this second surgery for a week after the first one. I do recall that Dr. Trezona is the one who brought this procedure to this area. I believe in the past, all the lymph nodes were removed just in case they were cancerous. In this procedure, the radioactive material takes the same path that the cancer would have taken to the first node. This one node is then removed (instead of all of them). The one node is tested and a week later I get results- if it is negative for cancer, no more surgery. If it is positive, another surgery and all nodes are removed.

The other creepy thing I read is that by the time cancer like mine shows up, its already been present in the body for 5-10 years. WHAT??!! What a horrid thought.

I go in on Monday morning to get more results and hear the final plan for surgery (or so that's the plan for now)