Christmas and Sickness

Christmas week was my 'good' week luckily. We had tons of fun with our families. My third round of chemo was to be Monday the 29th. However, I was up all night throwing up and such. Apparently I caught a stomach virus (at least one little cousin-in-law has same symptoms) at Christmas. So I called Monday and had chemo rescheduled. Early Monday afternoon my fever got up to 101 and Cody was freaking out, so he called the nurse. They made me go into the clinic for evaluation and decided I needed fluids by IV. (Did I mention that the clinic is about 45 minutes to an hour away?) Got fluids, which took like 2 hours, and came home. Felt a little better Tuesday, and felt a little more better Wednesday. My chemo is rescheduled for Friday. I hate having my schedule messed up. I won't get my Neulasta shot till Monday. So now my good and bad days are unpredictable to me, lol. Doesn't change the fact that I can't go to the cotton bowl. :( Cody and his dad are going and have great seats. I won't even get to watch it on tv until I come home from chemo.

Chemo (part 2 of 8)

Second chemo was December 15th (Monday). During my visit with the nurse practitioner, I told her every tiny symptom I had the first time (heartburn, nausea, restlessness, etc.). She gave me lots of new meds to try. As with the first round, I was mildly nauseated the first couple of days, and in major pain from the Neulasta days 3 and 4. I was extra nauseated this time though, from Wednesday through Sunday. Thus, the new anti-nausea med does not help. Will try a new one next time. Hair started coming out the day after chemo. Just falling out in the shower. My MIL came over to see if it was just thinning or what, and all you had to do is run your fingers through it and it would come out. So we shaved it. Had fun playing with a mohawk and such first. It didn't look as bad as I thought, really makes my eyes stand out. Of course, still having my eyebrows and lashes (for now) probably helps, lol.

In Between

With chemo on Mondays, I'm supposed to avoid crowds that weekend and the beginning of the next week (when my white cell counts are lowest). The second weekend (right before my next chemo treatment) I am to go out and do something fun (doctor's orders!). I also knew I was going to lose my hair, so my MIL cut it short for me in between my first and second chemos. Went wig shopping too, and have some great ones.

Chemo (part 1 of 8)

December 1st (Monday) was my first chemo. There's a lot of waiting involved. First, you wait in a big waiting room. Pay your co-pay and wait some more. Then you go get your blood drawn. (It hurts when the needle goes in to my port, but it stops hurting after 2 seconds). Then wait in a smaller waiting room. Then fill out this rating form of your symptoms on an electronic tablet. Then wait some more. Then go talk to the doctor or nurse-practitioner, who tells you what your blood work looks like and gives you a script for some meds. Then wait in an even smaller waiting room. Then go sit in a recliner for chemo. I told my doctor way before my first treatment that I was a nervous type, so my pre-meds include Ativan, which when given through IV, make me feel a little loopy. :) Getting the chemo wasn't bad at all, just sitting there basically. Mom took me to chemo and Elizabeth met us up there. After chemo, came home to a clean house (thanks to my MIL). Got in bed, was a little nauseated, and pretty much just slept. All in all, wasn't too bad. The next day (Tuesday) is when I went for my Neulasta shot. Neulasta boosts your white blood cell counts to help you not get sick (because a cold can be pneumonia in a chemo patient, etc.). That shot hurts and takes a minute to give and hurts the whole time. Bleh. I felt pretty good the rest of that day though. Wednesday is when the Neulasta pain kicked in. Every tiny piece of my body hurt. Luckily I have Vicodin leftover from my port surgery. Thursday I still hurt but not as bad. Friday I felt better from chemo, but had sinus issues. By Sunday I realized I probably had the same sinus infection that Cody had (even though he'd been sleeping in the guest room so as not to get me sick!). Called the nurse Monday to get some meds for it and felt better by Tuesday. The Neulasta pain and sinus infection were the worse parts of Chemo round 1.

Bionic Woman

November 24th was my port surgery. A port (or port-o-cath) is a little metal disk that has a rubber tube attached to it. The tube gets inserted into a vein and the port stays under the skin as well. It feels like a button. It is used to give IV medicine, now they don't have to search for a vein, the medicine goes into the port which is already attached to a vein. My port is near my collarbone. I was nervous before my surgery, but it ended up being no big deal. I was pretty sore and a little nauseated but had medicine for that so it was alright. I'm learning to ask for what I want when I'm in a clinic or surgery center. The anesthesiologist asked how I was doing before surgery and I told him I was nervous, so he gave me some medicine that made me feel gooooood. :) And after surgery I was thirsty and told the nurse that and she got me some juice! Apparently Elizabeth came up there and talked to Mom and Cody while I was having my surgery. Elizabeth is a fellow Ole Miss grad student, in the clinical psych program. I knew of her, but didn't really know her. She just went through everything I will be having for breast cancer. A mutual friend of ours hooked us up and she has been great answering my questions and just being there for me. After my port surgery, Cody and I went to talk to a fertility doctor about our options. Apparently chemo can make you go into early menopause, and getting pregnant can cause hormones that can make my cancer grow, plus I'll be on medicine for years after all this where I'm not allowed to get pregnant. The fertility doc said our best option was to freeze embryos (either to be put back in me or a surrogate). This would involve pumping me full of hormones and postponing my chemo. Cody and I both thought that was a bad idea, despite the fertility doc's pushiness. I have always wanted to adopt children anyway, so we had talked about having one of our own and then adopting one or two. Now, we'll just do it backwards, adopt one or two, and then have one of our own (if its meant to be). I know nothing about adoption, but when I'm well, I'm sure I will learn all I can about it. And hey, I get to have a baby without being pregnant! Lol, always a bright side to things, right? I do feel really bad about not being able to give Cody a baby of our own (at least right now). We had just started trying (less than a month!) when we got my diagnosis. I know he wants one so bad, and the only reason we were waiting was for me to finish school. I finally got baby fever and now we have to be careful and use condoms and such. And of course, everywhere I turn someone I know is pregnant or has a new baby. It's not that I'm not happy for people, but it's kinda hard, ya know? But I think once we can really start looking into adoption, it will feel so good that it won't matter anymore.

MRI, CT, PET

Had various tests to tell where my cancer has spread. First was an MRI. The point of it was to tell whether the cancer was in my other breast. I had to lay on my stomach with my breasts in these round holes for over an hour. It probably wouldn't have been so bad, except they injected me with the contrast fluid, and for some reason it made my good breast burn terribly! But the good news was there didn't appear to be cancer in the good breast. Had a CT/PET scan to see if there is cancer elsewhere (other than my lymph nodes). The parts of your body that light up are the ones to be concerned about. My tonsils lit up, which has nothing to do with the cancer, just an oddity (but I've always had sore throats, so I thought it was interesting). Parts of my spine lit up too, and those results were 'inconclusive,' possibly just fatty deposits. So they are staging my cancer as Stage 3, based on tumor size and lymph nodes. Stage 4 is the highest it goes, so at least they don't think it has metastized elsewhere.

The Breast Doctor

Dr. Berry is my surgical oncologist. He works at The Breast Clinic in Memphis (well basically Germantown). He is the person coordinating all my treatments and the one who decided on the plan of action. The first time I met with him, he did an ultrasound of my tumor. He also looked at my lymph nodes with the ultrasound and found one that was enlarged. He thought it looked normal enough, but just to be sure decided to jam a needle in and out of my armpit to get fluids from it. Originally, he thought the cancer hadn't spread to my nodes, but that meant he would have to do a biopsy on them later to be safe. However, it came back positive so when I get my mastectomy the lymph nodes will come out too. Anyway, Dr. Berry told me the plan on my first visit to him. I would start with chemotherapy, and yes would lose my hair (though he joked I would still look better than him, with his thinning hair, lol). The chemo is AC-->T and dose dense (every 2 weeks). The AC stands for Adriamycin and Cytoxan, the drugs I will get my first four chemo treatments. The T stands for Taxol, the drug I will get my last four chemo treatments. After chemo, I will get a month off to rest. Then I will have a mastectomy with lymph node removal. The point of doing chemo first is to shrink the tumor (as it is now so big there would not be much left to work with for reconstruction later) and to kill any cancer cells lurking elsewhere in my body. After mastecomy, a month off, then radiation. After that, another month off, and then I can have reconstruction. Getting hit with all that information was a shock. Dr. Berry set me up with the (in his opinion) best medical oncologist in Memphis, Dr. Schwartzberg, to be in charge of my chemo.