A Little Rain

Nurse made a glitch in scheduling. That created a whole new fun filled day of rearranging all other appts. :) <<< fake happy face. First day of chemo moved to June 6th, due to PET scan being moved to June 5th, due to port date being moved, due to Muga date being moved. Should be all good now. Loving all the stress hassles. I promise my normal personality is in here somewhere, full of joy. It just got buried a bit for the past couple of weeks! It will return. No worries. :)

Week 3 or 4 of Being Diagnosed.

Week 3 or 4 now. I've seen Surgeon, Oncologist and Breast Cancer Specialist, etc.

Here's the plan: We must do aggresive chemo for the HER2 positive first, minimum 6 months, and then surgery afterwards. By doing chemo first they will be able to monitor the size of tumor giving them more info on how the chemo is working.

First day of chemo is June 3rd. But let's put that on the back burner for a minute.

This week, before the chemo, I will have a Muga scan ( checks the heart for the one chemo drug to make sure it can handle it), then a PET scan (checks the enitre body to ensure that there are no other areas of concern) and lastly, an outpatient procedure to install a port in my chest area to be used for treatments that saves on your veins. :)

To back it all up a bit, my choice of surgeon at this point is undetermined because I've decided that I am placing it on the backburner since my concentration right now is to give 100% with the chemo. Will give the surgery and 2 surgeons I've consulted with some more thought closer to that time. No sense in putting my brain in overdrive. This decision can wait awhile!

I think that I've caught everything up to date medically with the posts. So from here on out, maybe I won't have to backtrack! But please feel free to ask away if I left anything out that anyone may want to ask any questions about. :)

I've talked, I've researched. I've tried to share a little emotions with family and some friends too. But I do have a tendency to sugar coat for the ones that I love. I have mostly kept it in the closet, the few times that I've had panic attacks that late at night, take your breath away and the pain and tears of it all that is to come overwhelms me. I've always been a tough cookie, my life has always generally revolved around others' happiness and being there for everyone close to me and even strangers. It is the most DIFFICULT thing for me, to see my family hurting and worrying about me, knowing that I can only do one thing to help them, and that is to fight, and to fight hard! I don't do well on the "other side". lol It's sooo difficult to let others help me. It's so hard not to be able to fix another's pain, that I feel I've created. But, I am trying.

Well, its a long holiday weekend. I plan to try and make the most of it with my family and friends, and especially my children! Hope anyone that reads this will too! God bless!

Tsunamis and Rainbows: My Journey with Breast Cancer.

Day 1 of my post: Let me start with why I decided this was important to document and share with others. As of a month ago, I was a generally healthy mom of three sons dwelling on the simple things in life. Then BAM, I'm 40 as of last summer, and that is the age that we are recommended to have a mammogram. :) My first one. Quick, easy and really painless. No worries though, I've never felt anything out of the ordinary, and I'm fairly small chested so really, if there were a need to worry, I'd have felt something, right? Well, not always the case. That mammo, led to another mammo and sonogram. All of which is very common practice when you don't have a "baseline" mammo to compare to. So I went and did the 2nd mammo with a sono. That sono led to a suspicious lump that revealed "hard and jagged edges". Still, not a huge concern, but a few biopsies would ease my fears. The biopsies were scheduled and 5 pieces were removed via needle biopsy, again fairly painless. :) (I''ve had some back surgeries in the past so alot of times I do believe I have a 'higher than most pain tolerance'. But honestly not bad, a little pinching. Uncomfortable but not pain really. This had all taken place in a matter of approximately 2.5 weeks?!? Round about there.

Alas, the results came in, I think it had only been a couple of days. Pathology reports came back with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma with apocrine features. ER- PR- Her2positive 3+

A lot goes through your mind when you have a couple of doctors calling and starting a conversation with "I'm sorry but....". It reminds me of what I imagine a sort of grieving process I suppose. First, it's denial, then fear, then you automatically think of all the survivors and think oh this can't really be too bad! So of course, like the rest of the world we start to scan the web for info. I started with the medical terminology to see what it all meant, then tried reading some survival posts. All of the posts I read were so uplifting, so full of hope and so positive! I really did enjoy reading them, but I started to feel guilty for my real feelings on all of this that I had going through my mind. Is there someting wrong with me, that I have tsunami feelings? And thus it brings me to today. Today, I've decided to share my story, my journey, all with honesty and truthfulness on what I feel, and how I am dealing with it. This may not be for everyone. But for those of you that aren't afraid to weather this ride with me, come along! Beware though, I've commited to sharing ALL of my feelings! Tsunami and rainbows!!!