Keith and I headed to UCSF Thursday for a second opinion. The doctor we saw specializes in HER2+ breast cancer. We arrived early (traffic was good) and she was running late, so we waited around for quite a while. When she finally came in she took her time with us. She was really quite positive about my prognosis. I believe her words were "not curable, but highly treatable". Apparently my flavor of cancer (HER2+) is generally very receptive to chemo and my particular cancer certainly seems to follow that trend.
She thinks my current regime is good and she agreed that it seems to be working (I'll spare you the photographic evidence). So I'll continue along with treatments and get a scan after 5 or 6 rounds. I never completely recovered from last year's chemo, so there's concern that I won't be able to complete all 6. Regardless, if things look good, then she'd advocate that I consider surgery and radiation to get rid of whatever is left.
It feels good to have another doctor evaluating my case and I'm looking forward to being able to run things by her when I come to the forks in the road.
Otherwise I'm feeling pretty good, some gullet issues are still hanging around, but I think I'm turning the corner. Right now, I'm enjoying a rare Sunday night without work tomorrow!