Today's the Day

I leave in just under 2 hours to see the general surgeon. I am hoping he does a biopsy first. It just makes sense.

Both my daughters have been sick the past few days. My big one took Mon and Tues off and just went back to school today. My little one had a high fever of 103.3 two nights ago. She fell asleep early last night which means she was up at 3am....which means I had zero sleep last night.
So right now My hubby and baby girl are both asleep in the living room. I will wake them in an hour.

At night I begin to feel this throbbing under Larry and in my left knee. I'm thinking its just because Larry lump is pressing on something when I lay in bed.
I know I shouldn't, but I read this whole medical document last night on the "whoops" factor. Apparently too many general surgeons are too cocky to take a biopsy first and assure the patients they are positive the lump is a lipoma even though There is no way to tell without a biopsy. So the surgeon cuts out the lump, sends it for biopsy. On the cases that the biopsy comes back malignant- the surgeon is surprised and now "whoops"- the patient has to go through another surgery to take out surrounding tissue that could contain cancer cells.

Whoops Surgeries
A study in the UK finds that "The most significant factors affecting survival were grade (high versus low) and depth of the tumour" and the expertise of the treatment center.2 In this study, the argument is made that patients have better outcomes at large hospital centers largely because local control is much better.2 In performing surgery to remove a sarcoma, it is extremely important to remove the entire tumor and surrounding tissue to achieve a wide margin between cancerous cells and healthy tissue. There's even a name for one of the common errors, in which the surgeon performs a "whoops" procedure.2 According to the authors, "This is when a lump is excised, usually with little forethought and without a biopsy and the surgeon is then surprised when the pathologist reports it as a sarcoma (hence the term 'whoops') .... most authors now agree that wide re-excision to obtain clear margins is necessary as residual tumour will be found in anything between 30 and 60% of cases."2 Needless to say, one surgery is preferable to two surgeries especially where the second one is totally avoidable. Local recurrence (LR) rates are much lower when the surgery is done correctly.

God, I pray this is just a Lipoma.