Another Big Day

Today was another big day in my breast cancer "journey", but I got through it pretty well.  I had my chemo port inserted in the morning.  For anyone not too familiar with chemo, a port is used to give the doctors and nurses easy access to my veins without having to run IV's or pick lines every time I have a treatment.  So even though it's a surgery to insert it, it apparently makes everything much easier throughout the process.  My port was inserted by an interventional radiologist, who numbed me up, inserted it using an ultrasound as his guide, hooked it up to my vein, and sewed me back up.  I'll admit it wasn't a blast, but the nurses gave me lots of "happy juice" in my IV so I was pretty chilled out during the procedure and dopey for about an hour afterwards.  Now I have a big bandage (which means we're going to have to do some explaining to the boys tonight) but not a lot of pain yet which is good.  The only annoying part of my post-op instructions is that I can't get the incision wet for 10 days, which means no sweating (and therefore no running).  Bummer.

My other big appointment of the day was with my oncologist, Dr. Yao, where we finalized my cancer treatment plan. My care coordinator, Kelly, also came to the appointment with us - it was nice to have another set of ears and she reviewed everything again with me afterwards. I really liked Dr. Yao  - he was very upbeat and knowledgeable.  Because my tumor is large and in two lymph nodes, they will be giving me pretty aggressive chemo as long as I can handle it. I'll have 8 rounds of chemo in 2 week cycles.  I'll be receiving AC drugs (adriamycin and cytoxan) for the first 4 cycles and then TH drugs for the remaining 4 cycles (taxol and herceptin).  He told me to really keep an open mind about side effects for now because there's just no way to tell how the treatments will affect me.  I may just have a bit of fatigue and nausea and nothing else, or it may be rougher.  But he said that for now, I should plan to keep life as normal as possible throughout the treatments, which was very encouraging to hear.  Being a person who likes to ask questions, I also grilled him quite a bit on my prognosis.  He felt pretty positive that the tumor will respond well to these drugs.  No way to know for sure, of course, but I liked his confidence.  He also told me that my case will be discussed on Thursday at their weekly breast cancer seminar, so all of the doctors from all of the different specialty areas will review my tests/scans and provide their opinions.  He doesn't expect anything to change based on their discussion, but he said this is an opportunity to get feedback from an entire team of doctors. So we left the office feeling pretty good about having a plan in place for beating this cancer. I'll have my first treatment next Tuesday.

In other news of the week - I started my new job yesterday! My manager assured me again that they will work with me on whatever I need, schedule-wise.  I can take off time when I need it, work from home when it's easier, etc.  Such a relief. It was a bit overwhelming going through the whole orientation and training process with all of this going on - and it's going to take me much longer to get up to speed than it normally would because of all of my time away from the office - but there's no way around that. I'm just happy that they are willing to be so accommodating.

The rest of this week will be pretty busy getting ready for the start of chemo.  I have a few other appointments that I have to fit in before I begin chemo (a heart scan, a check-up with my primary care doctor, a meeting with the cosmetologist) and then we have a big party day coming up this weekend! We're celebrating Owen's 6th birthday Saturday afternoon at a gymnastics center and then I am having a "Team Amy" party Saturday night.  Yes, I know it sound a little crazy to be having a party for myself in the midst of all of this, but I wanted one last chance to see my friends, rally my "team", and thank everyone for all of their support before life gets even crazier. Plus I turn 35 the day after I start chemo, so I figured I should celebrate while I have the chance (if anyone local who is reading this blog wants to join in the fun and didn't get an email from me - please let me know and I'll send you the details!!).

So all in all, I feel like I'm making some progress.  Believe me, it's been a roller coaster ride so far.  Although I know I sound generally upbeat in this blog, I've had many times where I just lose it.  I can't understand why this is happening to me and what I did to deserve this (I know....nothing....it's just really bad luck...but they "why me" question is hard to get out of my head).  It just seems so unfair - Ed and I had so much on our plates as it was....we didn't need this.   And more than anything else, I just want to know that I'm going to survive this.  Although everyone is very positive about my prognosis, no one can ever answer that question 100%.  But I'm just trying to take it day by day right now and stay as positive as I can - not always easy, though, trust me.

I'll end this blog by posting a couple of cute Halloween pics of the boys: the first is of the two of them with their Halloween "man" that they constructed with Grandma (not sure why Colin is pointing to his nose - but at least they're both smiling); the other two are of my Storm Trooper and Super Why getting ready to go trick-or-treating (it was chilly out, so they had lots of layers on under their costumes).  Enjoy!