Since I am still in the middle of everything, it is difficult to reflect back, so I am sure my attitude is going to change over time. Here is a brief summary of my year so far. In future posts I add more details regarding the different treatments that I went through on this journey.
January 2013
In January I went in for my annual PAP exam. I jokingly mentioned to my doctor that my left breast felt funny, and I wondered if it had anything to do with holding my newborn son (he is adopted so I was not breast-feeding). I didn't feel a lump, but I knew it felt funny. She told me it was probably just a cyst, but sent me in to have a mammogram the next day. During my mammogram, they said they wanted to perform an ultrasound. Okay I thought, no problem. During the ultrasound the technician kept getting more quiet and pushing harder in certain areas. Hmmm . . . at this point I was starting to get nervous.
Then I got dressed and sat alone in the room waiting for a doctor to come talk to me. My husband was at his own doctors appointment, so we were texting back and forth. When my doctor came in he told me that I had a large solid mass and he recommended an immediate biopsy. Wow . . . guess it wasn't a cyst. Unfortunately it took a week to schedule the biopsy and Mr. Breeze and I were on pins and needles during this time. Mr. Breeze took off work to go to the biopsy with me. [More on that experience in another post]. The biopsy turned out to be positive for Cancer. I also had positive lymph-nodes so the cancer had already started to spread. I was then sent for a battery of tests(PET scan, MRI, Muga, blood work, etc).
In the end I was diagnosed with IDC Stage 3a Cancer, with a fairly large tumor. There were also a few "suspicious spots" in my right breast, but those turned out to be benign and a cyst. So the next step was to meet with an Oncologist.
February 2013
Met with a wonderful oncologist [who happened to look just like Priya from the Big Bang Theory, so we will call her Dr. Priya in this Blog]. She was wonderful in explaining everything to me. And based on my pathology report we decided to start Chemo right away, to see if we could shrink the tumor before surgery. So on February 21, 2013 I started on some of the heaviest chemo drugs they could give me. I told her I would go through a year of hell, so that I could watch my baby boy grow up. And we developed a tough treatment schedule that would give me the best possible odds.
March 2013 - July 2013
I had 6 months of chemo with 3 month on A/C and 3 months on Taxol [Chemo treatment post to follow]. For my 35 birthday, I lost my hair. Seriously that was the day it came out in huge clumps. I will post my experiences with the chemo separately, but while it wasn't fun, it wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be.
August 2013
I finished chemo on August 2, 2013. I had to give my body time to heal and bring my white blood cell count up before I could have surgery. On August 28, 2013 I had a bilateral mastecomy. I was originally only to spend one night in the hospital, but I had such a bad reaction to the morphine and pain killers, that it took 3 nights before I was together enough to eat and walk on my own. I also had expanders put in by the plastic surgeon for my reconstruction during the surgery.
The great news - the lymph-nodes showed no cancer cells, and the tumor had shrunk small enough that they were able to get a 1 cm margin around it to remove it! Hooray - this is probably as close to Cancer Free as I can be considered!!! In my mind, I am already a survivor.
September 2013 - October 2013
I finally got back to work on October 7th, after being off work 5 1/2 weeks. Due to the rapid expansion that I had to go through [I will post about that too, as that has been the worst for me, but is not the case for most people], I was on a lot of pain killers and could not come back to work. The expansion has also caused a lot of issues with nerves, shoulder pain and pectoral muscles and cording. I have been working with an occupation therapist, so that I could start to dress myself and shower by myself again.
I should mention here that the Breeze family has a great support system. My parents have been helping us take care of our son [since I haven't been able to lift him since August 27th], and my Mom has been my caregiver helping me change the drains after the surgery, dress me, shower me, and get me my pain medication. Mr. Breeze parent's are an hour away and come out on the weekends to help out as well.
So here I am . . . I am about to go in for my Implant surgery on October 25, 2013. I am told this will actually help me feel a lot better (as these fully expanded expanders feel like bowling balls on my chest, and I am only going for a small C cup). After surgery I will heal for 3-4 weeks and then I will start 6 weeks of Radiation, just in case there are an sneaky little cancer cells that are hiding in other lymph-nodes. Remember I wanted the treatment that was going to give me the least possible reoccurrence, so this is another preventative measure. Also since I was already a Stage 3a, they highly recommended radiation as cancer cells could have spread.
My goal is to have everything completed by early January 2014 and start living again with out a weekly visit to some doctor. Here's to beating cancer!!!!
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