Thursday, March 9, 2017

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. :)

2 comments:

Larry said...

Because you have been so candid with us I'm going to go ahead and say something that I'm not particularly proud of but I'm probably not the only one thinking like this: I struggle to find the words to say to you because I'm thinking about how your cancer affects ME - My loss, My fear. Like, I'm glad I read this latest news here and didn't hear it from you in person because I'd have got that stupid look (combination of sad and "HUH?").
SO here's my plan: Ima enjoy talking to you, working with you, reading your facebook posts just like always.
And be thankful that I can.

Just Jenn said...

I've comforted a lot of my friends today. And I've been in yalls shoes too so I get it. Momma and two friends of mine have lost to breast cancer. Imma do my damndest to beat it though.