So long ovaries, goodbye uterus

Today I went to the doctor to have blood work done. The main reason was to see if my hormone levels had decreased (from the shot I got 3 weeks ago) so that I can start taking the chemo pill (that you have to be post-menopausal for). Well my blood work wasn't back yet when I saw the doc but due to Aunt Flo still visiting, he figures they aren't lowering much and we should go ahead a do a hysterectomy so that we can start treating the cancer. Tomorrow I will go meet with the gynecological oncologist to discuss scheduling it. While I had always wanted Brink to have a brother, we knew it would be dangerous for me to get pregnant again (you may remember I ended up in ICU with a heart condition after having Brink), so I'm not super upset about that. I always wanted to adopt, but we had a bad experience with that and now I'm not sure since we don't know how long I'll be around. I enjoyed being an 'only' child for the most part, so maybe Brink won't mind it either. I'm in a little bit of a better mood today, but still kind of gloomy. Was looking stuff up about the Ibrance that I'll be taking. Seeing in black and white the average survival times is jarring....they rave about Ibrance basically doubling the survival rate from 10 months to 20. TWENTY MONTHS. If I see Brink turn 5, I will have outlived the average survival rate, even with this new awesome medicine. There are people who have lived 10+ YEARS though, so that's what I'm shooting for. I want to fight about homework, and argue with a cranky teenager about his hair, and freak out about him driving. Let's get my insides out so we can start killing this cancer. I'm ready, bring it on.

Grief (in moderation)

You know how you are just walking along and all of a sudden BAM! You get hit by a bus? Yeah, that's what grief is like. It just hits you, full force, out of nowhere sometimes. It hit me today that I could possibly not get to raise a bratty teenager. That it's possible I might not make it to his first double digit birthday. Oh and that Momma is missing his terrific two's. Let's combine all that grief and run me over, shall we? But you know what? It's monday, and I'm going to work. So I don't have time for a nervous breakdown. I will manage to find some kind of superhuman strength and push the bus off of me, bandage my wounds, and go about my life as if there's not another bus coming sometime soon.

Enjoyment (in moderation)

Enjoy your life. That's pretty much the ultimate goal, right? But we can't do that 24/7 UNLESS we learn to find the joy in everything. Because in order to enjoy time off, we must work. In order to enjoy health, we must exercise. In order to enjoy love, we must experience loss. I may not fully enjoy working out in that moment, but I enjoy the extra energy and well being it gives me. So in a way, I do enjoy it, I just have to remember to enjoy it in the moment. This is where mindfulness comes into play. The more fully immersed you are in the moment, the easier it becomes to find the joy. I hope you all have a joyful day and many joyful moments.

Imagine

Imagine if you woke up one morning, everything else was the same, but your age in years was 30 years older than it should be. How would you feel? You're not nursing home old age yet but you don't have quite as far to that as you did yesterday. Yes, you might live to be 100 but that's unlikely, so instead of 40-50 more good years you've got 10-20. You don't know when you'll go of course, but that timeline is closer than it was. It's sort of a big shift.....that's kind of what a stage 4 diagnosis feels like. Yes, I might outlive statistics and predictions, just like anyone could live to be 103. But the shift of what's probable changes drastically; that's what hits you in the gut. I'm not saying any of this to be pessimistic, or even just realist....it's just an analogy that I figured out and thought I'd share.

Big girl panties

Cried it all out yesterday, feeling more optimistic today. Apparently, some people who were on the clinical trials for Ibrance, have lived disease free for like 15 years already. Also, I had like a 50% or less chance of living five years after my original diagnosis but here I am. I'm an individual not a statistic. They say only the good die young, so I should have plenty of years left. ;) Hope everyone else is feeling better today too....I've had to comfort a lot of my friends. I feel very loved, and appreciate you all. Now let's get back to life! So....Cody has strep and I'm getting a chest cold. Hope everyone has a good weekend! I'm thinking my 2 year old will be watching more TV than should be allowed but it is what it is! Pink kisses.

Years....not decades

Stage four, I leveled up. Not something a cancer patient wants to hear, but it is what it is. I'm officially living with metastatic cancer. This is treatable, not curable. Luckily, I only have tiny spots and they're not in organs or bones so the treatment will probably get rid of it for awhile (though technically there could still be cancer undetectable by scans). I will have my ovaries suppressed by a shot (and eventually taken out), because hormones make my cancer grow. Once they stop working, I'll start a chemo pill called Ibrance (fatigue and low white blood cell count are the biggest side effects). It's very effective at progression free survival, which means the amount of time before the disease progresses is much longer when you are taking this medicine. I'll be on it for as long as it works and I can tolerate it. So, hopefully, years. My goal is to watch Brink graduate high school. I will fight this as hard as I can and maybe it will stay out of my organs/bones for a very long time and they can write about me in the medical journals. :)

Cancer? I hardly know her!

Never intended to reopen this blog, and maybe I'll switch platforms or something, but my cancer is back. Now, don't get scared, I'm not going to die from it (at least not this go-round). There are only teeny tiny spots in some lymph nodes. I may not even have to do chemo; will find out tomorrow afternoon what the treatment plan is, but it should be a much easier treatment than before. My friend asked me if I was scared and I can honestly say not really. I was scared before my scan results....scared that it was in my bones or liver or brain or something. But teeny tiny spots in lymph nodes? That were too small to diagnose from a scan? Despite the super painful biopsy, I'm in a good place. I'm ready for whatever the doctor wants to do to get rid of it. Bring it on so I can go back to living my life. As my dear friend Candace used to say, Pink Kisses.