Herceptin #3

I debated on whether or not to cancel my chemo for today as my surgery was just 11 days ago. The thing that helped me make up my mind was the fact that I'm tired already, and a chemo appointment wouldn't make it worse. So, with my mind made up and a plan in place for a nap after chemo I went to chemo. Today my chemo buddies were my good friend and neighbor Sarah and my Aunt Pam.
I felt nothing during the port access today!! Could be that the area where the port is numb as part of the mastectomy or due to swelling from the surgery. I am hoping that it'll be numb from here on out!

Today's treatment went by quickly, just long enough to enjoy visiting with my chemo buddies and my yummy sugar cookie.
After my chemo I met my grandparents for lunch. Not a bad way to end a treatment! I love how concerned my grandparents have been for me! They are so wonderful and I love them!

To all of you, thank you for the flowers, the text messages, love notes, phone calls, yummy meals and treats! This has been a very hard week! OR TWO! I have felt your love and concern for not only me but for my daughter as she was hospitalized at the beginning of the week! My family is forever grateful for you love and prayers! We are truly blessed to know each one of you!

The pathology report!

I can hardly contain my emotions! To say I am happy is an understatement! I am overjoyed! And I'm a blubbering baby! All for a good reason!
I got the phone call just a short time ago that my path report was complete. The results are that there are NO residual cancer cells AT ALL! ANYWHERE! They were able to locate the fibrous tumor bed on the left side and found no live cells. In total I had 11 lymph nodes removed, and of those, 5 showed signs of treatment effect, which means that at some time they were probably positive with cancer. But now? There was no live cancer cells there either! They found a fibrous adenoma in the left breast that was NOT cancerous, and a fibrous adenoma in the right breast (that we already knew about).
My cancer treatment will not change. I will finish healing from surgery, have my tissue expanders expanded and have radiation. Once radiation is complete I will start taking tomoxifen, and will take that every day for the next 5 years.

Was going through all this hell worth it? YOU BET IT WAS!!

Thanks for traveling this journey with me! Thank you for loving me and carrying me through my hard days!
I love you all!

New doctors AND hospital confirmed

Both of my new doctors are at the Huntsman Cancer Center. This is a VERY pretty building! Very plush and nice inside. I met with the plastic surgeon on Tuesday and the general surgeon yesterday. First I'll talk about the surgeon, as he'll be doing the beginning part of surgery. This surgeon's approach will be a little different than my original surgeon. He will do whichever surgery I decide to do, and I'm still leaning toward bi-lateral mastectomy. He will be removing  ALL lymph nodes on the side that had cancer, this is different than my previous surgeons plan. Remember she was going to take a few and check for cancer and only remove those that were positive? This doc believes that if he were to do that we could get a false negative because I've already had chemo. Not knowing which nodes were infected to begin with leaves us now knowing which ones may have cancer cells lurking. This news was very shocking to me. But now that I've had time to think about it I'm comfortable with the decision. The surgeon had not had time to review my imaging to see the before and after pictures of my tumor. He is going to have a radiologist review them and  get back to me on whether he thinks I'm a candidate for nipple sparing. If the cancer was to close to the edge then I will lose them. If it looks like I'm in the clear he will still do tissue testing during surgery from under the nipple to make sure there are no positive cancer cells, if there are then the nipples will have to go. Overall I thought this surgeon was nice and I think he'll do a good job.

The plastic surgeon Tuesday: I thought he was a nice enough guy. I'm going to have to get used to having a resident Dr. and extra nurses in tow though. That's how the U and Huntsman work, they are training grounds. He'll place my expanders and do all my follow up visits, which means I'll be seeing him on a weekly basis for a while. One week after surgery I'll have my 1st set of drains removed (there are two drains on each side), and then at the 2 week appointment he'll remove the last two. Around 3 weeks after surgery will be when they start filling my tissue expanders, and this will continue on a weekly basis until we get to where I want to be. Depending on healing time and how long it takes to fill the expanders will determine when I can start radiation.

Surgery was scheduled for September 15th. They'll call me the Friday before and let me know my surgery time and instructions. I can expect a one night stay at the 4 Seasons resort called the Huntsman Cancer Hospital, which means I'll come home some time Tuesday. The only reason I would stay longer would be if there were complications or I am having pain management issues.

The surgery info has been sent over to my insurance to be preauthorized. There is a chance that they won't cover a bi-lateral mastectomy. Dealing with the Insurance is a big head ache!! I should know something before surgery I hope!!

Depending on how I'm feeling I may need to push my September 26th chemo back a week. For that chemo I most likely will need a driver, but I'll ask for help when it gets closer.

I am enjoying having my kids back in school! I plan on getting my house back in order and organized better while they are at school and before surgery. Cleaning makes me happy! And feeling good enough to clean is awesome!

Thank you for your continued prayers! My journey is far from over! This next part is very scary for me! Keep praying for me, your faith and prayers will help carry me through this!

New doctor AND a new hospital?! Ugh!

These past few weeks I've learned my insurance didn't cover my plastic surgeon. There are NO plastic surgeon's at St. Marks that take my insurance! After talking with an upper management at my Insurance they thought they could work out a one time contract with the plastic surgeon that I wanted, however, I received word yesterday that they did NOT want to pursue the one time contract as there are other doctors at the University hospital that I could choose from. I kind of thought this may happen so I've spent time this week looking into the surgeons and plastic surgeons at the U. I had one doc recommended to me that does plastic surgery. I talked to ladies in my support group and several of them had him as their doc and they loved him. The good new is, he takes my insurance! Of the 3 surgeons he works with only 1 of them takes my insurance. I've made appointments with both docs for this next week. If all goes like I'd like, I should have a surgery date set by the end of the week, but if I had to guess, I'd say surgery most likely will happen the week of September 15th.
So with the new doctors comes a change of hospital. I'm not too excited to go to the U, but hopefully as the surgery date gets closer I can have a change of heart and attitude.

Herceptin #1

Quick update of what's happened since my last email!
A huge thank you to my family for putting together the Caramels for Christy night! I loved being able to visit with each one of you that came. And I especially loved all the hugs! For those of you who were there during the sudden down pour of rain, wasn't that awesome?! I have a pretty amazing family, on both sides, and I'm so thankful for all that they do to support me and help me out!

My surgery date is still tentative. The reason? The short answer is that I'm working with my insurance to find a surgeon and plastic surgeon that BOTH take my insurance and work at the same hospital. I am really hoping to have this resolved by the middle of this week. I may have to switch hospitals for surgery, but I'm still holding out hope that we can find a resolution that allows me to stay at St. Marks.
My MRI was on the 8th of August. It was just as nerve racking as I thought it would be. And to say I'm glad it's over and done is an under statement! My veins are pretty hammered from chemo so the IV didn't go too well. While the contrast was being injected my vein burst, which made for a fun bruise. While the MRI wasn't pleasant the results from it are INCREDIBLE! The lime size cancer tumor is completely gone! Which means there was a complete response to the chemo!! I got to see the results with my own eyes, and it was pretty cool! They showed me the MRI imaging from March and the one from the most recent so that I could see the difference. Just because the tumor is gone doesn't mean there aren't some single cancer cells left behind, so there will still be a surgery and radiation.

Last week I met with my radiation oncologist. It was a very educational meeting that explained why radiation after surgery is so helpful. Once surgery is over and I get the green light from the plastic surgeon I'll meet with the radiation oncologist again to get mapped out with a few very small tattoo's for treatment. Radiation could begin as soon as a month after surgery, but it ultimately depends on my healing from surgery. Back in March I was told I would have 30 treatments of radiation (5 days a week for 6 weeks), but it looks like it may only be 25 treatments (5 days a week for 5 weeks). Guess we'll wait and see how it all works out.

My herceptin treatment was last Friday. My oldest son was my chemo buddy. He loves going to my treatments with me. Maybe he should be a medical oncologist when he grows up...
My port access went very smooth and wasn't uncomfortable at all! Wahoo! That always makes me happy!
I met with a Doctor that I had never seen before. He's a retired doc that comes in occasionally to help out. My wait to see him was almost a 30 minute wait. My longest wait to see a Dr. We talked about my finger nails, which are showing signs of a reaction from taxotere. A couple of my nail beds are bruised and have fallen off. Not very pretty.

The herceptin treatment is much quicker than the original chemo appointments! And there are no nasty side effects! This past weekend I felt great!

Thank you for continuing to pray for me! My journey is not complete! I'm excited that the hard chemo's are done! That's a big relief! I know there are still hard days to come, but with all the love and support I continue to receive I know I'll get through it! Thank you for loving me and strengthening me! I love you all!

Chemo #6, The last of the hard ones!

After the most amazing family vacation I came home to have my last and final hard chemo! I'm so grateful to have had a vacation! We spent a week up in Jackson Hole hiking, playing in Jenny Lake, String Lake, going to a rodeo, riding Grandpa's motorcycle, canoeing at Colter Bay and canoeing from the Jackson Lake dam down to Cattleman's Bridge. The food we had was so yummy! The cousin and family time was wonderful! This was a much needed get away from reality and I'm so happy for the memories that were created!

Today amazing husband took the day off to be with me and drive me to chemo! I'm love having him with me! He is my ROCK!
My appointment was at 9am. I was taken back to have my port accessed pretty quick. I had a nurse I'd never seen do the access and it didn't go to well. It as pretty uncomfortable and then the blood wouldn't flow. She tried flushing it with saline and heparin, but it didn't work. She ended up having me lay on my back with my right arm behind my head. I made coughing sound while she flicked a syringe trying to unplug my port. I eventually started laughing because I sounded so silly fake coughing and that got my blood to flow. And to top it off my access needle was placed crooked. :(

My chemo buddies today were two of my great friends. My husband stayed for a while and then went home to get my 3 youngest kids so they could be there for the bell ringing! Ringing the bell was everything I hoped it would be! It was quite an emotional experience! I cried! I know I'm not done, but to be done with this part of chemo is so exciting! I'm ready to move on!

My MRI was scheduled for August 8th at 4:30pm. I'm going to call my family Dr. to get a prescription to 'chill' me out for this appointment. This is the test I live the VERY LEAST!! They will do a contrast IV and I will get to lay on my face for 45 minutes. Anyone want to take my place and do this for me?!

My herceptin chemo is August 15th and we will be discussing my MRI results. The herceptin treatment will much faster than the chemo I've been receiving. With the port access, visit with the Dr. and the drug administration it should only be an hour to hour and a half. Bradley will be my buddy at this appointment. He loves the cancer center! :)

After meeting with the surgeon and plastic surgeon earlier this month we set a tentative date for surgery of Sept 4th. This could be a one night stay in the hospital, but depending on my pain level it could be a two night stay. I am currently leaning towards a double mastectomy, but I'm waiting for the peace of mind that this is the right decision.

I can't say enough how much your love and support mean to me and my family! We couldn't do this without your love, service and prayers! It's true what they say, you don't know how many friends you have until you go through something hard! I hope that I am able to give something back to you as you watch me travel this path. And I look forward to the day I can pay it forward to someone else in need!

July 7, 2014

I made an appointment to meet with my surgeon. My husband and I will meet with her this Wednesday to go over my options and choices. I'm really looking forward to this meeting as I'm hoping to gain some peace of mind as well as become more educated so I can understand what's going to take place. I most likely will have to meet with her again after the MRI to go over it's results and confirm the plan of action, but I'm ok with that.

I am meeting with a fellow breast cancer survivor this week who has experienced surgery and just started radiation. I hope to gain from her experience some insight as to what I may experience as well. Strange as it may sound I'm looking forward to this meeting and our conversation.

Thank you for continuing to pray for me and my family! Thank you for loving and serving us! There is not a night that goes by that we don't pray for those people who are blessing our family! We are so grateful! There are times that I feel your love so strongly that I get emotional and cry. Your service strengthens my spirit and gives me strength to fight on!