Surgery is done, Kat's fine. (Guest blogger: Jeff)

Here's the short version:

The surgery was about as good as we could have hoped for and we are very optimistic! Kat is feeling good!

The long version:

During the surgery, Dr. Williams used a relatively new technology (3 or 4 years old) that injected blue dye and radioactive material into her breast at the area of the tumor. The doctor watched where the dye went and tracked it with a geigercounter and found that only two lymph nodes were connected. These two lymph nodes were removed and will be tested for cancerous cells. The great news here is that according to the doctor, any less than four is considered good news - the less nodes connected, the less likely the cancer spread. However, getting zero nodes is also bad, because then the doctor would take out 20 nodes as a safety. So 1 or 2 is ideal.

Also, these nodes are not necessarily cancerous - this is important to remember. We will be waiting for the pathology report to come back over the next 3-7 days to tell us. We are praying for negative results, which would make it even more unlikely the cancer spread.

Now for the tumor itself. The doctor never saw it because when he did the mastectomy, the tumor was contained inside. This is also great news because we did not want the local tumor to have spidered past the breast tissue into the muscle and chest. I imagine they will analyze the tumor at a later date.

Kat is recovering and does not even feel nausea. She will be in the hospital overnight and may come home tomorrow (I better go start cleaning...)

Many people have asked for the hospital address to send flowers. She will likely miss any delivery, so you may want to send something on Friday to our home address:

2689 Blossom Trail East, Blacksburg, VA 24060

Thanks everyone for the support. Hopefully the next entry will be Kat's, and you know it'll be a good read.