It's a sleepless night before our next visit with the oncologist. The last visit wasn't so pleasant. Here are some excerpts from Tess's email about about that visit to her highschool girlfriends:

“Hello my M-town homies,
We had the visit to the Oncologist on Thurs (that was May 17th, an unbelieveable 3 weeks ago) and I must say he sure did not have a pretty picture to paint. With more indepth testing they were able to determine that my cancer was not estrogen-driven, which is a harder cancer to treat and the implications lead more towards a genetically passed on case. Also, they were able to determine that based on the make up of the tumor and my age that we are dealing with a very aggressive cancer so the fear of spread was instilled. He also confirmed what my surgeon said..no kids..many tears over this subject but I certaintly know that I would make one kickass adoptive mother so that is a tabled chapter for Jamie and I down the road. While his bedside manner is truly for the birds, I will take it b/c he is the best and his staff of nurses are wonderful so I will just bitch to them. Thursday night..no sleep for Tess and feeling very pissed off. Friday was a turnaround for us. I had a cat scan and a p.e.t. scan in the morning to determine if the cancer had spread. At two o'clock, i got the results. THE CANCER IS ONLY IN MY LEFT BREAST AND ONE LYMPH NODE! Happy Feet, Part 2, I never thought I would be jumping up and down about having cancer in one lymph node! This will not alter the treatment much as far as an aggressive approach and they have scheduled my surgery to remove my lymph nodes and my left breast to this Tues., May 22nd. I am expected to start Chemo in about 3-4 weeks after this surgery with reconstruction surgery being the last piece. This timeline certaintly will cover 2007 for us and potentially part of '08.
Ladies, I can't tell you how much all your calls, your emails, your cards, your thoughts, your prayers, THE FANTASTIC FREEZER, and all your other special gifts mean to me and my family. I feel so supported and loved by you guys and am sooooo grateful for this childhood clan. I plan to fight and I will survive this. I will update with more, once I know more.
Enjoy your weekends!
Much love,
Tess "

As you all know, after surgery we learned that the PET scan showed a false positive and there was no cancer in the lymph nodes. So we are hoping for a much better meeting tomorrow and a not so aggressive protocol.