Feb 13, 2023
Treatment day 348!
43 more days left!
One year ago today… right about now actually, I was sitting in the break room at work after making the mistake of opening my patient portal and learning I had breast cancer. I spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out how I was going to finish my shift keeping my *@$# together for 3 more hours because I wasn’t ready to say it out loud yet. Coworkers weren’t the first ones I wanted to talk about it with. Having a social job where keeping a happy smile was the only thing acceptable made it very difficult to keep going. But slowing down with time and silence to think about it didn’t help either. It was a rough night to say the least. It’s been a long journey, but 1 year later I’m thankful that after all I’ve been through I can instead say I HAD cancer!
I hope I can always use that in past tense going forward!!!
So what’s going on now? Well, I will have some imaging of things of concern but my oncologist said he’s not worried that my cancer spread because I’m still in treatment and the cancer responded to the chemo and other meds. So hopefully it’s just something annoying and not serious. I’m having a bone scan next week. Time will tell.
I have my phesgo injection tomorrow then only 2 left in March. Blood test was yesterday and he said it looks great. Echocardiogram was a couple weeks ago and somehow the results didn’t make it to my oncologist so he sent for them and will read it before my injection tomorrow.
Nothing much going on right now except looking back over one heck of a year! I’m almost done and I hope I never have to do it again
Feb 20, 2023
Treatment day: 355
Days left: 36
I had my bone scan today. My oncologist said he wasn’t worried about it being cancer since I’m still in treatment and my cancer responded to my chemo and anticancer meds, but once you’re diagnosed with cancer everything is bumped up from a “concern” to “scary”! And what would already be scary is magnified. But… once you’re diagnosed with cancer everything seems to get prioritized to the top of the list and my scan was already read and posted to the patient portal. I’m SOOO relieved that it came back clean!
Doesn’t explain my pain so I’m sure it’s on to the next thing, probably a CT scan, but for now I’ll take it as a win!
Maybe things will get less scary the further out I get from my diagnosis and treatment???
Feb 29, 2023
I can’t sleep so I decided to share a little TMI, ’cause it’s always fun to have a good laugh. And what is TMI at this point anyway?
Me: someone online was nice enough to point out that if you hold a flashlight up to a breast implant it glows (yes its true)
My 21 year old daughter: Just how much light are we talking here? Would this be useful in a power outage? Like when you hold a light up to a jug of water and the whole room lights up?
Umm, no HAHA
Finish your week with a good laugh. You’re welcome
March 27, 2023
For 391 days I’ve been fighting for my life and today I have been officially promoted from “active cancer patient” into surveillance, It’s been a LONG road to say the least.
What does this mean going forward? I’m done with my treatments and I’ll be getting some tests to have as baseline for the future. One more echocardiogram and an MRI. The MRI can’t happen until after my next surgery so probably first week of June. My cancer was HER2+ which means I’ll always be “high risk” but my surgery put my recurrence rate around 2%. I’ll be seeing my oncologist every 3 to 4 months for a few years then pushing out to 6 months after that. This first “surveillance” follow up will be at 3 months (second week of June) to look at the echo and MRI then I’ll be every 4 months after that. Anything suspicious in the future will be looked into. Once you have a cancer diagnosis everything is taken seriously. Labs will be checked at each visit including tumor markers. He talked about a blood test that is still in clinical trials called Signatura that can detect DNA changes before any signs of tumors or other methods of catching recurrence. Because it’s not FDA approved yet insurance may not cover it, but the company will absorb the cost if this is the case. I will be possibly getting an annual MRI if I choose. He said there aren’t any guidelines for this after a double mastectomy so it’s my choice along with what insurance allows. Mammograms will no longer be a thing for me now.
I still have my second surgery in May, but this isn’t cancer treatment, it’s continuing the reconstruction process. I’ll be SO glad to get rid of these expanders. They are quite uncomfortable. I wasn’t aware until after my first surgery that they sew them directly onto the muscles of the chest wall. So moving is awkward and painful at times. I have lost some range of motion in my right arm so I was referred to physical therapy. Their first available appointment isn’t until the end of April. My next surgery will also help this greatly!
I’m also still dealing with some other little things like really thin fingernails that are splitting and cracking. That’s been difficult to deal with, but they’re coming back strong and healthy and that part, which was effected from the chemo, is almost grown out. My hair is thick and healthy again, albeit still shorter than I like.
I can’t even express how thankful I am with how far we’ve come with cancer treatment!
I also can’t express how blessed and thankful I am to have the love and support from some amazing friends and family! Thank you ALL for being there for me through this!
My treatment is finally over!!!