One (Big) Part of the Journey Completed!

So, once again I'm long overdue on updating my blog.  The good news, though, is that is because I've been feeling great and staying busy.  I am happy to announce that I have survived 21 weeks of chemotherapy and am feeling pretty much like my old self again. 

The remainder of treatments (since my last post) went pretty much like the rest.  I did have a dip in my counts around the seventh week of Taxol/Carbo.  I had to skip a week of getting the Carbo and then cut back on the dosage by 25% for several weeks.  I went back to the original full dose for the last two treatments.  I continued to receive the full dose of Taxol throughout.  Also, when my counts dipped, I had to start taking shots again.  This time, they were slightly different.  I had to take one a day for three days following each treatment.  I was able to do the shots at home this time.  Both my mom and Quentin were trained to give me the shots.  Thank goodness for them, because I'm pretty sure I couldn't have given them to myself.  Besides just the daily hassle of taking shots, they also caused me some bone pain (although not nearly as bad as the other ones I had to take) and made me feel just a little worse overall for a couple of days.  However, I never felt as bad throughout the entire course of Taxol/Carbo as I did during some of the AC treatments.  I was able to keep up a lot of my normal activities, including getting in some sort of work-out almost every day. 

My last chemo treatment was June 10.  Quentin took me, but I ended up having a whole crew of visitors at the end of my treatment.  Some very special people surprised me by showing up to celebrate the end of chemo.  Jack, Lucy, my mom, my dad, and my mother-in-law all showed up with huge pink balloons in tow.  They totally surprised me, and I was so glad they did!  The nurses presented me with a certificate and said some really sweet things to me and gave lots of hugs.  The people at the CBC, where I go for treatments, are all so wonderful and were essential to making the last several months bearable. 



 



I am currently in the middle of a 5 week break from any kind of cancer treatment!  I am loving every minute and am so glad that it coincided so nicely with summer break.  I've been having a great time hanging out with Jack and Lucy, going to the pool, and doing all our usual summertime activities.  We even managed to take a vacation.  We spent last week in Hilton Head with my parents.  We did lots of biking, swimming, and playing at the beach.  Quentin, Jack, and I even rented wave runners, which was so much fun!  I am so thankful for my health and for feeling well enough to enjoy all the things I used to! 

Heading out on our morning bike ride!

This crazy guy got me out on a wave runner!



Another thing I'm thankful for is the hair that is starting to grow back!  Several weeks into the Taxol/Carbo treatments, I noticed that it was slowly coming back.  By the time I was finished with treatment, I had very short hair all over my head!  It is growing (slowly) and thickening (slowly).  Unfortunately, it came back almost white.  So, once again, my talented hairdresser Ashley came to the rescue.  She colored it and shaped it up a little bit, and I now have a very, very, very short hairstyle!  I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it yet, but I'm getting used to it.  I still wear the wig for some occasions, but also go without it sometimes.  I'm getting more used to the short hair as the days go by.  I even got a compliment on my haircut at the grocery store the other day! 

The next step in my journey is surgery.  I am scheduled to have a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction on July 17, the day after Jack's seventh birthday.  Following surgery, all of the tissue will be biopsied to determine whether or not I had a complete response to chemo (i.e., whether there is any cancer remaining).  I had an MRI a couple of weeks ago to give some idea about whether anything is remaining.  There appears to be nothing left in the left breast (woo hoo!) and only a small (7 mm) place remaining in the right breast.  My doctors seem to think that the place in the right breast is likely scar tissue.  Basically, as large as the tumor was in that breast, it makes sense that there could be some scarring remaining and that the tumor didn't just completely dissolve into nothing.  The lymph nodes also looked clear on the MRI. 

Whether or not there is a complete response will determine next steps.  If there is not a complete response, I could be facing more chemo.  I am praying so hard that that does not happen, and it looks promising based on MRI results.  If there is a complete response, the next step will likely be radiation for the lymph nodes that were positive.  Reconstruction will also be ongoing.  Tissue expanders will be placed at the time of surgery, and I'll have to go in weekly for "fill-ups," where they inject saline into them to gradually get me to the appropriate size.  At some point, depending on what other treatments are in my future, I'll get permanent implants.  That's looking to be several months away, however.  There is also a hysterectomy in the somewhat near future, again depending on what other treatments are going to be needed.  We'll know more about the timing of everything once we get those biopsy results after my surgery. 

Thank you to all of my prayer warriors.  Please continue to pray that my surgery goes well and that they find that there was, indeed, a complete response to chemo.