Sentinel Post

Some of you (the perennial "A" students) have clearly been conducting your own research. I know this because I was asked a question about my "sentinel node," a topic I failed to blog on because it seemed a little too medical. But, if someone is posing the question, it follows that others may want to know.

As the name implies, the sentinel node is the soldier standing guard at the entrance to the lymph system resting under the arm. According to Dr. Susan Love, cancer cells, when they decide to spread out, almost always leave the breast via this lymphatic passage.

For doctors to decide the best post-operative treatment for a particular patient, they need to know exactly what she's facing. Has the cancer made a move? To learn this, during the surgery, doctors perform a sentinel node biopsy. The surgeon injects dye around the area of the mass, and the dye travels through the lymph vessel to the sentinel node. This node is then removed and biopsied on the spot. Studies have definitively shown that, if the sentinel has no cancer, the other lymph nodes will also be clear. If that's the case, the surgeon stitches you up, and you're done, at least until you begin radiation or chemo, or whatever they dream up for you.

But if the sentinel node is not perfectly clear, the surgeon will continue to take out lymph nodes to see what they reveal. This is how my particular surgery may go from being relatively easy to more complex. That said, based upon ultrasounds by two different radiologists at two different hospitals, my lymph nodes appear normal, which is a good sign. But you never know for sure until the doctors do a biopsy.

If the surgeon does remove more than the sentinel node, I've read that it may impact one's golf swing. No worries there. I have no golf swing, nor do I plan on needing one at any time in the future. (I doubt that I'll retire to a tract home with a commanding view of the ninth hole.)

And retirement is a long way off. For the immediate future, I plan on doing more research on the topic at hand, so keep those breast cancer questions coming. Information is everything. I know this first-hand, because I've spent the past 10 years working as a private investigator doing research for attorneys and other clients.

My current self-assignment -- to investigate this disease -- is no different. Only this time, I have a huge stake in what I learn, both for myself and for the rest of us. Someone has to be on watch, so we can all do better at prevention and treatment. At least for the moment, I seem to be a sentinel at the front post.