Six Months Later...

Strange as it may be, finishing radiation and chemo has been extremely difficult for me. Over time, cancer can kill your will. I have been in a defeatist downward spiral and a hypochondriac hell, with sporadic moments of happiness. There have been times that all I could imagine of my future was death. That scar tissue? Surely that's the cancer growing back. Those headaches? Surely that's the cancer spreading. I've also been bitter towards life in general. It's not fair. Everyone else is living their life, and I'm stuck wading in this pool of shit. Waaaah, waaah, whine, whine. So, this had been the majority of my mindset in the past few months. It's ridiculously depressing, but I lost control. Cancer can do that. To borrow a thought from an article I recently read - some people say that cancer is a gift and can make you appreciate life even more. Can I fucking return it, please? I appreciated life well enough, thank you very much. Upside down, right side up, backward, or forward, there is nothing positive about this experience. I'm a naysayer. All it has done is make me bitter.

In spite of all that, the past month has been good for me. We took a road trip to NY. I remember as we were rounding our final lap on the BQE bypassing the nighttime Manhattan skyline, I got a breath of life again. I became happy. We spent time with family for two weeks, and it was uplifting. I love New York. And life has been on an upswing since. I've been coasting at my top weight for the past six months, and have finally had the energy to become proactive. I've dropped 10 pounds so far (still have 20 to go) by going to the gym almost every day and eating healthier. I am finally making progress. I have a long way to go, but I'm moving forward again.

And then yesterday happened. It was a milestone. Let's backpedal for a minute. My oncologist's philosophy, and the general consensus in the medical community regarding my type of breast cancer, is that they don't do routine scans after treatment. I had a double mastectomy, and there is no breast tissue. For monitoring, they simply do blood tests (and I assume they check tumor markers), and physical exams. It makes one quite weary, but that's the way they do it. If the cancer is coming back, there will be symptoms, and I guess the studies that have been done show no better prognosis one way or the other. I've had a hard time prescribing to this methodology. However, I went to see my radiation oncologist (a different doctor) to get a checkup three months post-radiation and her mentality is that it's better to catch it early if something is going on. It's also relieving for the patient. So, she ordered my CT scan, and I went in on Tuesday for a scan from the neck down to my lower abdomen. This is the first scan I've had in almost a year and I was beyond nervous. Well, I went to the doctor for a routine monthly shot yesterday, and asked for the results certain that they wouldn't be ready yet. But, they were. To make matters worse, the nurse told me that the doctor needed to read it first before I could get the results, so I had to wait 15 minutes thinking that something might be wrong. Why would she need to see them first? I don't know. Anyway, I started crying as soon as she told me. Everything is normal. Granted there are two other scans I still need to confirm (a bone scan and a brain MRI), this is pretty good news!! I'm so so happy.

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Ticking clocks

Did you hear those crickets?

It's been quite a while since my infamous disappearing post. I decided to postpone writing for a while after I stirred some controversy. I also gave up dairy for a while. And Facebook. And photography.

My soul is dry and I am tired.

Raindrops on Roses

Hi friends! Four a.m. seems like the perfect time to write after a two-month hiatus, don'tcha think? I'm rounding the last lap of chemo, with only two weeks to go! I can't pinpoint the reason for absence of writings, but it could have something to do with a lack of ability to articulate my thoughts in words, those lovely neurotoxins, perhaps... or perhaps a tired mind. Chemo is quite a good place to be, relatively - at least, it provides the illusion of progress, and at most, it actually fulfills its service. Unfortunately, this bender is coming to an end, and I must face the reality of quarterly exams and wait for the results with sweat on my palms.

This three months of treatments, which have been every Wednesday, has been quite different in nature than the first three months. Taxol and Herceptin are strange substances. The cocktail leaves me hyper and talkative (i.e., not me) on days one and two, and I mostly pull college hours on Wednesdays, hitting the pillow around 7am. I'm productive. But everyone has been walking on eggshells around me, as I develop a severe case of irritabilities on this weekly cycle. The decadron (steroids) gives me a lovely breakout rash come Thursdays, and my ravishing appetite has gifted me some extra pounds. I'm weighing in at my heaviest - 67 kilos as of yesterday - just about 148 pounds. It's depressing. But this is it. I have no nausea, no lethargy, nothing of the likes of the first three months of chemo. My hair is coming back, but it's still not me in the mirror. I did buy two funtastic wigs. But sometimes they make me cry. I hate looking like a drag queen. But there is a good side, I suppose. When I get nostalgic and peruse through the photos of the past two years, I can see myself a bit more objectively, through a stranger's eyes. And I really deserved to treat myself with a higher esteem. I promise to do myself better in the future. Hooray for self esteem.

In boob news, I finally healed and started to have the injections in the tissue expanders. Doc will keep pumping me up until radiation starts, which should be upon completion of chemo, I am assuming. I won't be having my final reconstruction (that boob job I've been advertising) until six months after radiation is complete. I am not too happy to wait this long, but apparently he can't do it any sooner because the tissue will not be healthy enough.

So, in summary, here's what's left:
- Chemo: 2 weeks!!!!!!
- Herceptin: 9 months after chemo, every 3 weeks
- Radiation: 5 1/2 weeks, every day
- Breast reconstruction surgery: 6 months after radiation is complete
- And finally: Removal of the power port, after herceptin is done

In total: About nine months and three weeks left. I'm staying strong, I really am. I'm even proud of me.

Yew and me

enchanted by Cate

Monday was to be a magnificent day. I was scheduled to go in to the Breast Cancer Center and have a few blood tests and a chemo teach, then meet with the study director to get myself enrolled in ALLTO that same day. Low and behold, another pothole in the road! Someone screwed up when they ordered my tests last week. While I was indeed supposed to have the ECHOcardiogram (a sonogram of the heart), I was also supposed to have an EKG (ELECTROcardiogram). My bad - I thought the echo was an EKG, but hey, I'm no doctor. And then they said I needed it done the same day to get into the study. I was fuming! Too many administrative mistakes with these people, and then they make absurd excuses instead of fessing up. There is not one character trait that I hate more than a dirty little liar. A poor one, at that. So, we ran around all day, working out the kinks and getting things done. And they did.

Tuesday, I received the news about the study. I made it into the group that receives only Herceptin, which is the standard of treatment without the study. I was randomized, and fate (in the form of a computer) led me on this path. I am content with fate's decision and am rather comfortable not being a guinea pig (though I would have done that as well). I am happy to contribute to medical science in this instance. Most importantly, not being in one of the Lapatinib groups leaves the door open for, knock on wood, using the Lapatanib in the future should it be necessary to further my treatment.

Come today, I started off the day (early!! 5:15a.m.) with some fresh-squeezed OJ, hecho con amor, and a delicious pita with almond butter and Bonne Maman strawberry jam. Yum! A delicious way to start out the day. We headed to the doctor for my 8:30 appointment and I had my first infusion of the new drugs - Decadron and a hideous amount of Benadryl to negate an allergy to the chemo, Taxol, and Herceptin (the hormone therapy). Taxol is "a complex di-terpene purified from the bark and needles of the Pacific yew tree. Approximately one gram of pure taxol is available from three to four trees, each 60 to 100 years old." Thank you, yew tree. I owe you one.

I was stuck at the doctor, literally, until 2pm! It was a long infusion day, since they do it very slowly the first time around. Herein starts the treatments once a week, though next week will be the normal three hours.

My favorite cousin Dani and my new cousin-in-law Victor are here from San Diego, and we're about to have some authentic homemade Mexican cuisine... so I'm off to be a glutton... chao, amorcitos!

Results

I'm half asleep and look like I was punched in both eyes last night. My endocrinologist, the darling that he is, just called with good and better news. The nodule is benign! He got enough cells to confirm. We all exhaled a big sigh of relief and shed a little happy tear. Smiles, everyone!

Biopsy news

Not much in the mood for writing (crying myself a river) but here's the update on today's events. We headed to downtown Fort Lauderdale for a visit with my new endocrinologist. Nice guy. My thyroid blood test results that had been drawn a few weeks ago show normal thyroid function. He did an ultrasound and he said the margins of the nodule look good. No funny business. He didn't see any calcifications. Then I had a few (four) biopsies. They were super easy, like the prick from getting blood drawn. (Well, the second one was a little more painful, but I'm not complaining. It only happened that way because I bragged that the first one didn't hurt.) It was a summer breeze compared to the hell of the breast biopsies. Those results should be in Friday, but he is not confident that they will be conclusive. Why, you ask? My nodule is highly vascular, so he's not sure if there are any applicable cells in the samples. It may just end up being blood. (Bon appetit!). He wants to put me on iodine treatment for a week and have me come back in for more biopsies (honestly, not a worry to me except for the time delay). He is going to consult with my oncologist to approve that and also to check with the director of the medical study to see if I can get by with the information to date. So, we're going to stop by on Friday and see if there's any biopsy news. Technically, I'm supposed to have my next chemo treatment on Monday, but I'm not optimistic that it will all fall into place by then. Without being too positive (which always backfires on me), I will say that I'm not worried about the thyroid at this time.

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If you're dying of boredom or completely obsessed with me (or perhaps just curious), here are the links to two other blogs I have written in the past - the first, my adventures in Costa Rica; the second, my adventures in wedding planning.

Your Ad Here: http://jdangelo.blogspot.com/
A Wedding in Istanbul: http://aweddinginistanbul.blogspot.com/

Buenas noches y amor a todos!

Biopsy