Chemo - round 2! Ding Ding!!!!!

Today is my second chemo treatment. And boy, did I try everything to get out of it -- much to my dismay I'm sitting here in my chemo chair all hooked up to my meds. My good buddy, Mercedes, is here with me and keeping me hydrated and laughing.

Not much has been happening since my last update. Last Friday, I ended up getting really sick and had to come back in for some IV fluids and more anti nausea meds. It sucked! But once all the meds were on board I felt so much better. I did find out that my white blood count was dangerously low and that freaked me out. I had to wear a mask for a few days and had to steer clear of my tiny humans for a little while which was a huge bummer. But as the weekend went on I felt so much better. Then on Tuesday I had my white count checked again and it was so much better -- THANK GOODNESS! So that made for a pretty OK week.

Shelby celebrates her 8th birthday tomorrow, I can't believe it! 8 YEARS OLD!!!! She's having a dance party with with a DJ and all her friends. It's going to be great, I just hope I can feel great, too!

Another update...

I can't believe it's been over two weeks since my last update! No news is good news though! The last few weeks have been awesome - I have felt great! I finally reached a point where the pity parties were no longer! I had to do something - crying every other day because I was feeling sorry for myself was unproductive to say the least! It changed nothing. Finally, the day after Mother's Day, I'd had it and I said no more!!! Seriously, it was ridiculous. What a difference it made - it was so nice to wake up every morning and say (probably 50 times before I even got in the shower) "today is going to be a great day!" I would repeat it to myself several times throughout the day, too - whatever it took, I wasn't going to allow myself to go back to that unhappy place. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge advocate for pity parties, but there just comes a point where you have to accept it and move on or it will literally consume your life and the lives of everyone around you. I wasn't about to let cancer do that!

On Monday, I chopped off all my hair and went into hat wearing mode. I figure cutting my own hair was one of the few things I still had control over. Plus, when it does start to fall out, it will fall out in smaller chunks. I think it will be easier to see small bits of hair on my pillow every morning, instead of chunks that are 5 inches long. I have a wig, but I'm not ready for that yet. I sorta feel like it makes me look a little stripper-esque. I'm actually not sure if I'll ever wear it, but it's there if I need it. Yesterday (Wednesday), I had the port catheter put in. Damn, that was a much more invasive procedure that any of us thought it was going to be. No one prepared me! I had to have a driver, so I knew they'd sedate me a little bit. I figured I'd be there for an hour at the most. My appointment was at 7:30 and I thought we'd be home by 9:00. Ya, right! We got home at 1:30!!! It wasn't a pleasant experience, BUT the sedation they gave me knocked my socks off, so that was nice. I mean, come on, if you're gonna do it, may as well make sure they give you the good stuff, right?! :) And seriously, what is it with me and doctors that are 12 years old?!! My radiologist that put the port in yesterday was so young! I was going to jokingly call him Doogie Houser, but I figured since he would be holding a scalpel to my neck within the next 30 minutes, I probably shouldn't. What happened to the good ol' days when doctors were old and gray? Then for the grand finale of my week, tomorrow is my first chemo treatment. Here's hoping all goes well and the side effects are minimal. All fingers and toes crossed!!!! Wish me luck!

Ethel and Alice have been very bad girls....

I'm quickly learning that cancer could care less about MY plans. Last week seemed like a month. I was sick all week. I saw two dr's on Monday that said I must have just had a virus because I had absolutely no other symptoms, besides the fever. On Wednesday, that all changed. I still had a fever on Wednesday, so I texted my plastic surgeon and asked if I should be worried. She asked if Ethel or Alice had any swelling or redness. I noticed that Ethel had a little redness, but I wasn't sure if it was anything to worried about. So what does one do? I told Alice to say cheese and I took of picture of her and texted it to my doctor. Once she saw the text, she told me to come into the office. Sure enough, Ethel hadn't done what she was told and she had a minor infection. It was nothing that antibiotics shouldn't clear up. Alice, she was still being a good girl and healing nicely. Thursday came and went -- I don't remember much because I was super sick. I felt horrible. I couldn't figure out why I felt so bad. Here we were post surgery by two weeks -- I should be feeling better by now! So on Friday, I was still feeling pretty shitty, so I texted my doctor again, but this time I noticed Alice was getting a little red. And, of course, I was still running a pretty high fever. So, back to the office I go - my appt. was at 3:15. Bobby took me this time, so I didn't take my wallet or anything with me. I honestly thought we'd be home and hour later. When Dr. Chan saw it, she said "I don't like this, I don't like this at all." Great, just what I wanted to hear. So, she did a needle aspiration with one of my favorite 60cc syringes. Thank goodness I couldn't feel it because she filled up the entire thing. She said she would send it off to the lab to find out what kind of infection it was and start me on some different antibiotics. She left the rooom. A few minutes later she came back and said I think we need to change course a bit, we need to go to the operating room tomorrow. I was speechless. However, it quickly became apparent that getting a room on Saturday was going to be difficult because the schedule was full, so we opted for 10:30 Friday night. Then it changed to 10:00 and finally 6:00. When we decided to do it at 6:00, it was already 4:30. We had no time to process anything, we just went. Now that it's all over with, I think not having time to process anything was a good thing. It was a very fast growing infection and we needed to get it taken care of - pronto. If I had waited until after the weekend, it would have gotten much worse and the tissue expanders would have been removed. That would have sucked. As it is now, I'm stuck with 2 drains again. They are such a pain in the butt. I'm amazed at how much better I feel, though. All week last week, my body was fighting the infection instead of healing me from my surgery. No wonder it seemed like I was progressing so slowly. So, since all of this happened, I'm pretty sure chemo won't start this Friday. I'm kind of glad because that means I get to have a nice Mother's Day....so I'm keeping my fingers crossed chemo gets delayed a week or two.

I have a plan and I don't like it....at all!!!!!

I met with my oncologist yesterday. Whew! Talk about information overload! May I just say that the people at Hematology Oncology Associates are about to become precious angels in my life. A friend of mine posted this as her FB status yesterday - "I'm beautiful in my way, 'cause God makes no mistakes... ~ Lady GaGa." How true this statement is to my life right now. I have no choice BUT to be beautiful in my own way right now because having no hair and square boobs is gonna have to be MY beautiful for the next 5 months. I still haven't quite figured out why God has chosen this path for me, but I know by the end of this journey, I'll find out. Bobby said that maybe with my breast cancer they will find a cure. Now wouldn't that be A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!?

OK, back to the doctor visits yesterday....

I met with my Oncologist, Dr. Sanchez. When the nurse was checking me in to get my weight, height and temp I learned that I still don't like to weigh myself, I've shrunk an inch AND I had a fever of 101! Say what? She asked me if I was feeling OK and I said no, that I felt like crap but I figured it was just par for the course right now. This explains why I had to leave in the middle of church on Easter Sunday and go home. I pretty much slept all day and then all night. I figured I had just over done it on Saturday when I went to get a pedicure with my mom and Shelby and then we went to Target. Usually, when I do too much, I pay for it the next day, so that's what I figured was going on on Sunday. Not so much. By the time I got home it was 102.2. Whatever, stupid fever! Anyway, Dr. Sanchez is super nice and super informative. She talked to us in terms that we understood. Basically, cancer sucks! Surprise! I know this is new information for you guys. Right? All together now and clap your hands.... CANCER SUCKS, IT REALLY REALLY SUCKS! I should get bumper stickers made. So, here's my plan....chemo starts May 6th and will go for 16 weeks total. I will go for my treatments every 2 weeks. I'm super lucky and get to take a medicine that is also know as the "red devil" -- this is the one that will make my hair fall out. On the upside, I won't have to be blow drying my hair in the middle of the summer - no more bed head! I'm thinking a hot pink wig is in order and I'm changing my name to Peaches for the summer. I have a port catheter installed next week in my big vein right under my collar bone. Because, you see, it's better to pump poison into the larger veins in your body than it is to pump it into the smaller veins. The red devil could potentially do so much damage to my veins and arm that I would need skin grafts to repair it. Uh, I don't think so!! Oh, and the closer to your heart that you inject the medicine, the better it is. OK doc, whatever you say. You might be wondering why I still have to do chemo if all the cancer was taken out. Well, it just so happens that I have an answer for you. It's because when you have a cancerous tumor it has cells that like to escape and travel thru your blood stream. Imagine a few pieces of dirt running threw a hose, those pieces of dirt are likely gonna get caught up somewhere in the hose. Sometimes they attach to other organs or land in your lymph system or any other place in your body and you get BREAST cancer there. So if a cell attached to my liver, I don't get liver cancer, I get breast cancer on my liver. So the chemo will help eliminate as many of those bad cells as possible. Unfortunately, it won't get rid of them all, so I won't be guaranteed that I will never get cancer again. This is why I actually pondered the idea of not doing chemo at all. I mean, if it doesn't eliminate my chances completely, why would I want to go thru this? However, after talking with Bobby - I quickly remembered the 3 reasons why - Bobby, Shelby and Cooper. Yes, I had a momentary bout with headupassitis - ever heard of it? Don't look it up, I'm pretty sure it's not in the dictionary :) But Bobby is really good at talking me down and helping me remove my head from my ass, and that's exactly where my thoughts were. When I made the decision to have a double mastectomy instead of a single, it was because the 20% chance of cancer recurring in the other breast was too much for me. I remember saying 1% would have been too much. So, yes, the 1% is still too much and I'm still willing to do whatever necessary to make sure I can watch my kids graduate from college, meet their soul mate and make some amazing tiny humans like I have been blessed with. Do I want to do this? H to the E-L-L no!!!!! But God has chosen this path for me, and we all know, he doesn't make mistakes. So I'm gonna get to the end and find out why!

Next appointment was with Dr. Chan - she's my 29 year old plastic surgeon. She's a rock star!!!! I thought for sure I had an infection on the right side where one of my drains was at and I didn't! So there is no explanation for the crappy feeling for the last 3 days or the fevers. Whatever, stupid fever. She pulled the last two drains out and gave me my first fill! She injected 30 cc's of saline into each boob - we can call them Ethel and Alice for blogging purposes. So first up was Alice, she got the first 30 cc's, so instead of being a rectangle, Alice is now a perky little square. Ethel was last, but she also got 30 cc's. I was warned not to look at the syringe with the saline, but that's almost IMPOSSIBLE to do since it was sitting right next to the chair I was sitting in! Think about it - the syringe we use to give our kids tylenol or advil is a 5 cc syringe, so imagine my eyes popping and my heart sinking when I saw two 60 cc syringes sitting on the tray when I walked in!! Let's not forget to mention the 2 foot long needle that is strong enough to stick in a horses rump on the end of the syringe. OK, maybe two feet is a slight exaggeration, but it was big!!! Good thing Ethel and Alice are still numb and I didn't feel a thing.

So that was my day in a nutshell....a very BIG nutshell. Remember people, I did a self breast exam and it has likely saved my life. Yes, it opened a door to a temporary hell, but imagine the hell your loved ones would go thru if you didn't do an exam and by the time cancer was found it was too late. If you don't do it for yourself, do it for them - because in the end, if you do it for them, you will still get to reap the benefits. Love to ALL of you. The meals, cards, gifts, flowers, Starbucks....all of it has touched my heart in ways that could never be put into words. Thank you a million times over!

Eh, it's not so bad...

Have you ever cut your finger really bad and you knew when you did it that it was a pretty bad cut? The first thing you do is grab it and cover it up because you're too afraid to see how bad you really cut it, right? After a few seconds of squeezing it really tight, you take a peek to see how bad it is. Well, my surgery was on Monday and I still haven't taken a step back and looked to see what my chest looks like. So, after Bobby and the kids went to church this morning, I decided it was time. I was alone, so I didn't have to worry about the kids busting open the door to see what I was doing. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. No, they don't look 100% normal, but I don't look completely deformed either. But the best thing of all.... when I looked at myself I saw a woman that didn't have any cancer in her body anymore. For the last month, knowing that I had this awful sickness in my body gave me the worst feeling. I felt like I was defective and I was so angry that my body had betrayed me in such a way. I also received great news on Friday - pathology results were in and the lymph nodes that were removed were negative for cancer and the doctor was able to get clear margins by 1cm, which means she was able to get ALL the tumor out during surgery. That was a huge relief because that means I won't have to do radiation therapy. So what's next? Tomorrow I visit my plastic surgeon and she will remove 2 of the drains. I can't wait - they are such a pain in the butt! Until next time....

Today is the day He has made....

I will rejoice and be glad in it! Here I am! Surgery went well. I ended up having to stay the night because I was requiring too much pain medication. I was actually very surpised at the amount of pain I was in. But those awesome nurses did their best to keep it under control.. The surgeon said she felt very confident that she got all the cancer out, she even removed some lymph nodes from each side. There was a little drama just before surgery - I guess you could say I freaked out! All of the sudden it just became so real and there was no turning back. I cried and I cried and I cried some more. I really didn't want to go thru with it (even though I knew I had to) - you could have called me the Runaway Patient. Then my best friend, Dr. Anesthesiologist, came by and he gave me my pre-surgery margarita and all was well with the world. Everything after that - I have no recollection of. Nothing! I suppose that's a good thing, right? I've got two drainage tubes coming out of each surgical site, plus a lovely undergarment to wear so I can velcro the tubes to my undergarment and they don't just hang down. I also have a pain ball that administers medication on it's own every 2 hours. thru another tube going into each surgical site as well. So, I have to carry that around with me, but it should only last a few more days and then it will be empty. I have to wear Bobby's button up shirts for now because I can't get my arms thru a regular shirt sleeve. I was pleasantly surprised that I'm not as flat as a board. There was enough skin left that my doctor could fill up the tissue expanders with quite a bit of saline, so I look like I have square boobs and it feels like they are right underneath my chin. That's better than nothing though. She expects that I'll only have to go in for 1 or 2 saline fills to make them bigger. I realize that this blog post is a little all over the place, but that's the best I can do for now because the pain pills make me a little loopy. So for now my friends - CIAO! Oh and if you haven't done so already, get up and go do your self exam.

Out with old and in with the new....

So, today is finally here. All I did was complain the last few weeks about how much I didn't like the waiting game. Now, I don't have to wait anymore. The road to health begins today. I absolutely can't believe all the well wishes I have recieved in the last 24 hours. I'm so lucky to have so many amazing people in my life. My first procedure this morning is over with and it wasn't too bad at all - 4 injections in each breast with radioactive medicine. I think that was one of the things I was dreading the most about today and it really wasn't bad at all. Actually, I didn't feel a thing. The worst part was that Bobby couldn't go back with me and he is my designated hand holder for today. Saying good bye to the kids this morning was a bit tough, but they were happy and smiling, so that made it a lot easier. Well, I guess I better go sign in. With any luck, the earlier I sign in, the earlier I'll get my pre-surgery cocktail. I'll check back in with y'all soon!