The chemo alone wasn't cutting it -- we're back in for surgery. Jackie had not felt any more lumps in her neck area, but tumors had started popping up all along the scar from the mastectomy. At first I suppose you could have counted them. We didn't. We didn't understand it.

You may have heard that certain insects breed resistance to pesticides when exposed to them over several generations. The same principle is at work here. Cancer cells "learn" to pump the chemo out of the cell as fast it gets in -- therefore no effect. Too bad that your normal body cells don't learn the same trick. At least then, when the chemo loses its effectiveness the side effects would go away as well, and you'd know real quickly that it wasn't working.

At any rate, here we were back for surgery. Jackie's oncologist had decided that perhaps we should look at a surgical option. He said radiation was out since it was in the area that had already been irradiated. Jackie saw the surgeon and he agreed. He would take out the old scar and really tighten up her skin. Since she was thin, he was somewhat worried about the tension and the stitches, but a skin graft didn't seem like a good idea. At least Jackie would be getting rid of part of the area that had been heavily irradiated.

Jackie has a Y scar now (on it's side)as a result of this. The surgery wasn't too bad. As predicted, her skin was pulled VERY tight, and it caused her a fair amount of discomfort as the skin stretched. However, the tumor ridden scar was gone -- and that was good.

The chemo was over for a while as well. The surgery, while not as major as a mastectomy, had removed a lot of skin. It needed time to heal, and it couldn't do that if Jackie was getting chemo.