Dec 19, 2023
Treatment day 292:
All my major treatment hurdles are DONE, but I’m still counting down the days until I’m no longer an active cancer patient and today I’m finally down to double digits!!!
99 days left! Whoop whoop!!
5 more injections
5 more visits with the medical oncologist
3 more visits with the plastic surgeon
1 more echocardiogram
1 more follow up with the radiation oncologist
1 more follow up with my lead surgeon
Some of these will continue after like the plastic surgeon, we won’t be done for a while. And I’ll be in surveillance still visiting my oncologist for years to come. But my one year in active treatment is 75% done!!! (time wise)
Dec 31, 2023
Valentines Day 2023 gifted me with a cancer diagnosis followed by: (so far)
25 rounds of radiation
14 visits with the oncologist
13 lab draws
10 visits with the plastic surgeon
7 visits with the radiation oncologist
6 chemo treatments
6 visits with the breast surgeon
6 prescriptions
5 CT scans
4 surgeries
4 visits with 3 radiologists
3 biopsies with 13 samples taken
3 echocardiograms
3 visits with 2 interventional radiologists
2 MRIs
1 radioactive seed implanted
1 chest port
And more love and support from family and friends than I could have imagined!
I might not like Valentines Day anymore
I definitely don’t like 2023 anymore!
Happy to put this year behind me! Happy New Year!
2024, I couldn’t be more ready for you!!!
Jan 29, 2023
Fun fact about radiation: eating a banana exposes you to small amounts of radiation and this can be used as a measurement for other exposures as well called the “Banana Equivalent Dose”…
For those curious (like me) my radiation therapy was equivalent to me eating about 4.5 to 6 million bananas.
Banana equivalent dose (BED) units are used to measure the amount of radiation that the body absorbs after eating one banana. A banana equivalent dose can also be expressed in sieverts, it is equal to 0.1 microsieverts. Bananas are used because they contain potassium-40, a radioactive isotope that naturally occurs in some foods. Some examples in BED include: a dental X-ray is similar to eating 500 bananas; a mammogram is equivalent to eating 4000 bananas; and a fatal dose of radiation is like eating 80 million bananas.”