So I talked with the general surgeon yesterday

It was a quick visit -- so this will be a quick post. Dr. Abell was very nice and quite informative.

The basics are that:
- he also agrees with the plastic surgeon that its more likely than not that I will need radiology after the mastectomy;
- this surgery will only take 2 hours and only require an overnight stay at the hospital;
- I will definitely lose my entire left breast and a small portion of my underarm area;
- recovery is expected to be pretty easy and pretty fast;
and finally;
- I will not likely have my reconstruction for at least 6 months, more likely a year from now.

He told me yesterday that he was going to do all that he could to have my surgery scheduled for sometime in the next two weeks. He was true to his word because I just got off the phone with his office and the surgery has been scheduled. Although I've been very open during this whole process, I'm not going to put the actual date of teh surgery here (at least not right now) because I really need some privacy around this situation.

My emotions have been all over the place lately and I don't want to bombard anyone else with my stuff at the moment. I am very grateful for everyone's response to my post "how does it feel to be you". I learned a lot and had a lot confirmed for me. Basically that this is difficult for everyone involved -- no matter how slight the involvement is perceived to be. There's just nothing easy about cancer.

I'm gonna try to get back to my nap. The surgeon's office woke me up with their call... so I need to get some more sleep and process this new information.