About time for a new post-huh

8 Sep

So not even sure when I last posted, but here is what is going on lately.

1. We are super busy now that school has started-Dylan is is first grade with a great teacher and nurse who take care of his really well and Drew just stared 3 mornings a week preschool and goes to speech once a week. Dylan is playing soccer and Drew is in gymnastics. I still work with the Young Womens and Kevin is the new Elder’s Quorum President. My kids are still pretty little but I can already feel it started where all I’m doing is riving kids areound to different things. They are sure having fun though.

2. I only have 6 more taxol chemo treatments (out of 12) and then I am DONE with chemo. For good!! I have not had hardly any side effects with this round which is wonderful. My nails hurt a little sometimes and my ears ring and I’m finally starting to lose my eyelashes and eyebrows (it was good that they lasted this long) but I do not have any achey legs, nausea, extreme tiredness tingeling hands or feet so I’m pretty happy. I take steroids on Fridays with the chemo and so once they really kick in by Saturday morning I go non-stop all day doing projects and cleaning. I can’t sleep and have so much energy that I want to use it while I can.

3.  We are going to be the “nerdy” family for Halloween and doing a Star Wars theme. It’s all because of me weirdly. I wanted to show off my bald head while I still have it and dress up as something fun but all we could think of were Uncle Fester and the like. So Kevin showed me a picture of Asajj Ventriss from the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon and she is way cool looking bald and bad with 2 light sabers. So I am going to be her, Val is princess Leia, Kevin is Hans Solo, Dylan and Drew are going to be clone troopers. We are all pretty excited.

4. We are planning on going to Vegas for Thanksgiving which will be lots of fun. I will have the last (hopefully) of my reconstructive surgery done sometime around Thanksgiving but the date has not been set yet.

5. Radiation for 6 weeks will start after the new year. So come February I will be planning a big cancer-free party!!

6. Overall we are doing wonderful and feel so blessed!

Chemo it is

30 May

We had a wonderful trip to San Diego and I will probably get around to posting something about that later.

I saw both of my doctors (oncologist and plastic surgeon) this week and we have decided to start chemotherapy right away and when that is over (in 20 weeks!!) then I will have my implants placed and get these uncomfortable tissue expanders removed. Then I will do my radiation after that. Whew!! There is a good chance that I will be 31 when that comes.

I am a little nervous to be starting chemo. It was always a far away thought for me. I will start chemo later…..after this or that….. Now that I have a start date I am feeling a little anxious. I know that I need to do this and that we will get through it and one day it will be a distant memory but that doesn’t mean I am excited about it. I have some hope that it will not be as bad as I have heard it can be. I am young and have no health issues so that is a big plus. My doctors are all saying that I can handle it so I’ll take their word for it. My first chemo day is next Friday, June 8th. That means I have 9 days to fit in a lot of cleaning and fun activities. I don’t know how much of that will get done this summer so I will do as much as I can while I can. We are making a summer bucket list of fun so when we are having a good day we will do something on the list. You know how to-do lists go but it would be fun to do most if not all of the things on our list.

Wish me luck. Continue reading →

Echo and Chemo Port

16 May

Things are moving along alot faster now than the past few months. I don’t know if that is a good thing. Today I went to get an echocardiogram done. It’s basically an ultrasound of the heart to give the doctor’s a baseline since the chemo meds are hard on the heart. I will have more of these through treatment to make sure it’s not doing too much damage to my ticker.

I was doing some research on my chemo regimen and that it is also called “the red devil” because it is really nasty. So that didn’t make me feel very good. I don’t want to be taking something called that. Yuck!

Tomorrow I go back to the surgery center again to have a chemo port put in. This will be in my chest right under the collarbone and will feed into my heart. This makes it so that I don’t need an IV everytime that I get chemo and saves my veins. It will be nice for my next reconstruction surgery too. I’m glad to get some of these things overwith so we can move forward quicker. I just hope that I will not be too sore and bandaged up to interfere with our vacation next week. We are going on our family trip to San Diego to go to legoland and sea world and much more. We are all very excited and I was determined to go no matter what. I’m glad that we are going and know that it will be a lot of much needed fun and relaxation. If that is even  possible with 3 little ones in a hotel and restaurants for 6 days.

Chemo plans

15 May

I wasn’t really nervous about going to the oncologist today to get my test results. I was kinda excited to finally know all the pieces to the puzzle and to know what was going to happen this summer. I was quite emotional though once I was in the room with the nurse practitioner. First of all, I had to wait a month since my last visit so all the tests could be finished. So when I get there today about 10 minutes before my appointment to check in and they tell me that I am not on the schedule today or for anyday for that matter. The secretary said she remembed putting it in the computer but it was not there anymore. I was a little upset that I might not get in today but luckily they squeezed me in with the nurse practioner to go over everything. And she was great and so nice.

The test results were good and bad. The BRCA(genetic) test was neg so that is really good news for my kids and siblings. (And my ovaries, since I would have removed them if the test was positive). But my oncoDx test came back with high risk results and showed that I am triple negative. Which means that I will need aggressive chemotherapy followed my radiation. To be specific if anyone is interested, my regimen is called dose dense ACT. There will no longer be hormone therapy though since I am triple negative and it is not sensitive to estrogen. So this is going to be a long summer but it is definately worth it all. I still have one more surgery to finish the reconstruction before the chemo starts but they would like me to start the chemo by or around June 13th so things are going to be happening pretty fast now.

I have already bought some cute hats on etsy and have a couple patterns to make some too. I’m okay with it all after thinking about it. It just seemed like the past 2 months I have been feeling great and living life pretty much like normal. Now the reality is setting in and it sucks but it is what it is.

Radiation Therapy

27 Apr

I have decided upon recommendation of my radiologist to have radiation therapy. This cannot be done until my reconstruction is done because I cannot have surgery until 1 year after radiation is complete. So the plan is to finish with my implant surgery and then have radiation for 6 weeks. If I need chemo (I find out in May) then the plan will be surgery, chemo for a few months??, and then radiation. This could be drug out for a long time but I feel like I need to do everything possible from keeping this cancer from coming back.

Here are the reasons why radiation is beneficial to me. 1-I am young and so they always are more aggressive with the treatment. 2-When they did the mastectomy, they took out all the breast tissue up to the chest wall. The tissue went to the lab and the margin of healthy tissue was very small. This means that the cancer was close to my chest wall and although they think they got all of the cancer it is too close for comfort. 3-Chemo is not as effective at the surgery site because of the healing and poorer blood supply to the area. So even if I need chemo, radiation is better for the chest wall and for preventing it from coming back underneath my implants or in the chest wall.

Of course there are side effects to the radiation but they are not that bad and very localized. I will have to go for 6 weeks Monday-Friday BUT I will only be there for about 15 min. max each day. Not so bad huh. Sounds much better than having CANCER again.

Still no plans

24 Apr

I know that one of the things that I am supposed to learn throughout all of this is to be patient. I still have no idea what is going to be happening to me through the next few months. When I went to see my oncologist last week she looked over everything and decided to do one more onco test before we decide if I will do chemom or not. She said we caught it early and everything looks good but not good enough to completely rule out chemo. My cancer was 0.8 cm which is relatively small. If it was .05cm then I would not need chemo. If it was 1cm then I would need chemo so you can see how it is hard to decide what to do. The next test will take a few weeks to see how aggressive my cancer grows. If the results come back low then I’m okay but intermediate or high means chemo.

I was not expecting my doctor to talk about radiation because my first surgeon told me that there is almost no need for radiation if I get the total mastectomy and my lymph nodes come back clean. So I am meeting with the radiologist this Friday to talk about whether or not he thinks radiation would benefit me. I guess it’s not that big of a deal it will just be an inconvenience. The actual radiation procedure will only take about 5 minutes but I will have to go Mon-Fri for 5 weeks to do it. So that will be annoying.

I am still continuing with the reconstructive process and hope to be able to have my next surgery for that sometime in June. I see that Doctor tomorrow so I’ll ask him what he thinks the timeline will be for that.

We are all going down to Las Vegas next week to do the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and I’m excited to be able to go and do that. Plus it will be nice to see all the family again. They have all been so supportive and loving through all of this. AND I can’t wait to meet and hold my newest little nephew Mason!

T-rex

24 Mar

I finally got an appointment with my oncologist and it is not until April 19. It seems like a long ways away but it’s okay because whatever further treatment I have is not emergent, I can heal and feel a little better before more treatement and I keep hearing from many people that it will be worth the wait to get into see this certain doctor.

I am feeling pretty good today. So you can imagine what I look like though my dad has nicknamed me T-Rex (Teah-Rex) and I feel a little like an old lady the way that I walk. I am sore and the skin is stretching so I cannot stand straight up and I walk/sit/stand with either my arms folded or held up funny so that is why t-rex is appropriate. It is pretty funny to see.

I have just felt so blessed to have such wonderful support here in my house, through the mail, through food brought to us, through facebook and blogs and so many ways that it almost makes all of this worth it. It’s so thoughtful and nice to hear of all the well wishes and prayers that are given on my and my family’s behalf and I thank each and everyone one of you for that.

Lab results

22 Mar

Okay, so today is much, much, much better. I have so much more energy, can move my arms more and am in hardly any pain (as long as I take my motrin). I had a post-op appointment with my Dr. and he had my lab results. It was all really good news.

-The sentimal lymph node biopsy is still negative.

-There was about 6mm of carcimona that was removed (that was expected). But my surgeon said he is confident that there are no stray cancer cells in my body anymore after the mastectomy and biopsy results. YAY!!

-What was not expected was a lot more DCIS found. DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) is a tumor in the milk ducts that has not become cancerous yet-but will in the future. The cancer I had was DIC (ductal invasive carcinoma) which was the next step after DCIS. So to make a long story short it was a really good choice to do the mastectomy vs. another lumpectomy because I would have for sure had recurrence of cancer if I opted for the lumpectomy. More good news was that the genetic testing that was done gives a grade of how aggressive the cancer was and mine had a fairly low score. In most women, this means that there is no need for chemotherapy. Studies have shown that if there is a low score and the lymph nodes are negative then there is not much benefit for chemo. BUT…..my doctors have been saying all along that it may be a different case since I am so young. There are only about 250,000 cases of breast cancer a year in women inder the age of 40. I am only 29 so there is a good chance that my oncologist is going to want to be aggressive reagardless of what the scores are. I have a referral in to see the oncologist soon and will see what she recommends for me. There is a chance I will not need chemo but I am still counting on it.

A Hot Mess

20 Mar

It has been 1 week since my surgery and I thought that I would be doing a lot better than I am. I have never had any kind of surgery/hospital stay before other than getting my wisdom teeth out and having 3 babies. I knew that I would be in pain but i thought that the pain meds would help with that. Well, the truth is I have been pretty much helpless for the past week. I can barely move my arms without pain and my Dad teases that I look like a T-rex when I walk around-if you can imagine what that looks like. I had 4 drains but now only 2 up by my armpits so I cannot take a shower. I cannot lift my hands very high so my hair is a royal mess and has only been washed twice this past week. If I could lift my arms I’m sure my pits are very hairy-sorry. The good things is that my family does not seem to mind the hot mess that I’m in. I’ve been quite nauseous/dizzy/sleepy-but it’s nice to see my kids every now and again as they creep in and out of my room. I’ve been taken very good care of by my family, especially Kevin. I don’t know how I would do this without him. My Dad is up here now to help with the kids and my mom will come later this week to stay for a while. I am ready for this to be done with but I think it’s going to take a while. I see my surgeon on Thursday and then we will set up an appointment to meet with an oncologist in a week or two. On Friday, I get my last drains out and can finally take a shower. You know how great a shower feels when you just don’t feel good.

Fighting Breast Cancer

8 Mar

I was given the diagnosis of breast cancer 2 weeks ago today. It has taken me a little time to finally sit down and blog about it.I feel like I am doing really well but the main reason I have not done it is because right now I do not feel sick-my life is just as it was before I knew. I guess I want to just continue with everything as long as I can. My surgery is not until next week and I know that once that happens-everything will be different. It just feels so weird to know that there is still cancer in my body right now and yet I feel so good. Next week, after my bilateral mastectomy I will begin to see an oncologist and start my treatment-whatever that will be. I know that I will feel sick then but hopefully the cancer will be gone by then.

It was a hard couple of days right after my diagnosis as you can imagine. Kevin and I were hardly getting any sleep. It was hard for me to understand because I went to the temple 2 weeks before I had my biopsy and I felt so good there and had no worries about my surgery or what the results would be. I was shocked when my surgeon told me my results. However, as time has passed I realize that I do not need to worry. I am going to do everything necessary to beat this and before you know it I will be having a party to celebrate that it is all overwith and that I am cancer free. I can feel the strength that the Lord has given to me because of the prayers and fasting and well wishes of my family and friends. I am so blessed to be loved by so many and will forever be changed because of it. Thank you everyone!

As the days have slowly passed by I am reminded of all the things that I am grateful for. Here are some of the reasons why I am glad that I have cancer right now. That sounds weird because of course I do not want this but it really was the perfect time for this to happen.

-My kids are young so they have no idea what is going on/

-We have great insurance because Dylan has diabetes so we have to pay a $2000 deductible and then everything is covered 100% till the end of Dec. That includes ALL the surgery and chemo!! Awesome.

-Kevin is done with school and he is the boss in his own office so he can set his own hours and close when I need him. Plus we get to see him every day for lunch.

-We are back in NV so we are way close to family here is Carson and Reno and much closer to the rest of our family in southern NV.

-Breast cancer has a 98% survivable rate and there are so many options for treatment.

-We signed up for a really good life insurance policy 3 months ago. I do not think that Kevin will need to cash that policy in any time soon, but I am glad we have already donethe physicals and health questionnaires because I was really heathy then and now it would either be really expensive for me to sign up or they would just deny me.

-I’ve been wanting to do something different with my hair so now I might get the chance to try something new. (if I have chemo) 

I will try my best to keep everyone updated on what is going on with my. I truly feel blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life and to have the knowledge of the gospel. I know that I do not need to fear but look forward to the future.  A friend shared a quote with me that I love. “Fear not. Be of good cheer. Your future is as bright as your faith.” President Thomas S. Monson

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