Forever and always.

Chapter 7

"Hey Clary, it's nice to meet you. I'm Cerise," the women with bleach blonde hair said, "and these are my coworkers Mae," she pointed to the women with long black hair, "and Patrick," indicating to the brunette standing towards the corner.

"Hi, it's nice to meet you all, this is my husband  Jace," Clary said a bit awkwardly as Jace shook hands with each of the doctors. "So what's the game plan?" Clary asked out of curiosity.

"Well," Cerise said. "The first step is to remove the tumor and in order to do that we will have to perform surgery," Clary nodded along understandingly.

"Then," Mae spoke up for the first time, "we will have to explore our options to make sure that cells in your body stop dividing at such a rapid pace. The best way to do that is through chemotherapy or radiation and Patrick will talk to you to see what treatment will work best for you. Mrs. Herondale-"

"Clary," Clary corrected looking directly at Mae.

Mae cleared her throat. "-Clary. I know this is a lot to grasp believe me I do but the best thing to do right now is go on. The sooner we start surgery and treatment, the better."

Clary nodded. "So when should we have the surgery?"

"The sooner the better. I suggest sometime this week. So let's see it's Tuesday now, so how about this Friday?" Dr. Rorish suggested.

"Okay and what are the risks of having the surgery, she won't die during the surgery will she?" Jace said looking towards Dr. Rorish and then the team of doctors.

"With surgery there is always that risk, but the survival rate is very high. Although not many lung cancer patients have surgery," Cerise informed them. "See in most cases by the time the cancer is caught it has already spread to other parts of the body, so surgery is pointless. In fact less the one out of twenty small cell lung cancer patients have surgery. In your case however we have found the cancer relatively early, which greatly increases your survival rate."

"I'm sorry I'm just a little confused. What exactly will you be doing during the surgery?" Clary asked.

Mae was the one who answered. "We will be performing a lobectomy. You see the lungs have five lobes, two in the left and three in the right. The tumor is growing on one of the lobes in your right lobe. In a lobectomy, we have to take out the entire lobe in which the tumor is growing on. This is the most common procedure on SCLC patients, this way all of the tumor is removed and we can be more sure that we did indeed take out all of the infected area, while also not completely changing the lifestyle of the patient."

"So after the surgery, and I start my treatment, what would be my survival rate then?" Clary asked almost afraid to hear the answer.

"For stage two small cell lung cancer," Cerise said with a sympathetic tone, "the chance of survival is around nineteen percent."