I'm finding it impossible to resist the urge to determine my treatment options. I have no idea what I'm facing in terms of the impact on my work schedule, with over five scheduled work trips between now and the middle of February. My first appointment with the breast surgeon is scheduled for January 10th. When my primary care doctor asked me if I would be ok waiting two weeks for the appointment I said, "no problem." OMG, what was I thinking?!!
A friend, who is also a physician, sent the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines) as this will be the reference document from which the breast surgeon then applies her intuition and experience to create a treatment plan. Even though I work in healthcare and am accustomed to medical jargon I found the NCCN Guidelines to be too time consuming. I then found the the NCCN Guidelines for DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) on the Susan G. Komen website. The Susan G. Komen website greatly simplified the medical verbiage and helped me to begin understanding the likely treatment options.
This information is helping me develop a working understanding of the conversation I will be having with my breast surgeon and will help us to co-develop my treatment plan.
Ultimately, we will combine the Guidelines with her experience, my preferences and needs, and a little bit of intuition to come up with the optimal treatment plan.