Cancer Vacation

Well, my oncologist thinks waiting is the way to go. I'll get rescanned in several months and hopefully Herceptin will do its job and keep things in check! In the mean time I'm taking a cancer vacation. I'm feeling really good, my hair is starting to come back and with three weeks between infusions I'm enjoying forgetting about cancer. Some days I do better at it than others, but I'm working on it. I'm walking a lot, I even went for a bike ride with Keith today. It has been too long since I'd done that. I'm definitely not in biking shape, but that'll come.

I'm getting ready to go back to work. I can't believe there's only one more week of summer!?!?It'll be good to get back to it this year. I'm enjoying getting things organized and I'm crossing my fingers that things go smoothly this year!

As I relax and enjoy what is left of summer I'm enjoying some delicious steaks courtesy of an old colleague. While the steaks are scrumptious, we also enjoyed playing with the dry ice that came in the box (geeky fun). I'm not sure what I did to deserve that box full of goodness, but it is certainly being enjoyed! Thanks PD.

I really owe a whole lot of you a thank you! I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Thank you for the meals, the delicious treats, the chocolates, the unexpected gifts, the sweetest cards, the emails, the comments on the blog, the facebook comments, all of it. It has all helped make this most craptastic situation more bearable and for that I thank you. While we're not out of the woods, we have made it through a very ugly patch.

"Everybody gets a humpback whale!"

I'm back from a good visit back east with the family. It was great to catch up with my mom and sister. I even had a chance to spend some time with my cute little three year old niece. She is a funny little one! Her favorite joke is to channel Dane Cook as Oprah..."Everybody gets a humpback whale!" She thinks she's pretty funny and she's right!

So Keith and I went to see the surgeon today to hear about the results of my MRI. MRI's are more precise than the PET/CT scan I had early in July. The point of this MRI was to check on the cancer in my breast so we can decide whether or not I need surgery. According to the MRI there are still three tiny little spots of cancer (about the size of pinheads) in my right breast. This isn't surprising, but even so it isn't what we wanted to hear. It is still unclear whether or not I will have surgery (and this drives me crazy!!). The surgeon will talk it over with my oncologist and we'll take it from there. There is no definitive evidence that removing the primary tumor is helpful once the cancer has spread and in fact leaving it in makes it easier to monitor how effective treatment is. It would be pretty major surgery to have if it doesn't actually help anything..... such a sticky widget. My prediction is that I won't have the surgery right away and we'll wait six months (when I'll have another MRI) and see where we stand. Hopefully the Herceptin will wipe out all the tiny bits that are still left and if not then maybe I'll push for surgery...

We also discussed the impending need for an oophorectomy (removal of my ovaries and fallopian tubes). The fact that I have a BRCA mutation means that I have a 20% chance of getting ovarian cancer. So sometime in the next year or so I'll get that done. It shouldn't be too bad. It's done laparoscopically and the surgeon says it takes only a couple days to recover. I'm hoping to put it off for a couple months anyway...

The reality is that overall I'm still doing better than expected given my starting point back in February.

Scans...

So I'm flying off to the other coast to visit with my family. Lucky for Keith he'll have my scans to keep him company. Here's the deal...When you get a scan you can get a CD copy of all the images. Last week Keith and I decided to take a look at some of the images. They're cool, but some of it is pretty creepy if you ask me. Keith on the other hand is completely fascinated. I think he missed his calling and should have been a radiologist!

A Thankful Birthday!

I had a lovely birthday yesterday. Keith and Red (the dog) and I went for a nice hike at the coast. Then we headed out to Encuentro, a newish vegetarian joint here in Oakland, for a delicious dinner. I can't believe I'm now 38, holy crap!?! Of course this year is a little different, instead of just being disturbed by how fucking old I am, I'm really thankful to be around and living it up! This year has had some incredibly sucktastic times, but for the moment there is "no detectable cancer" and while I'm still bald and tired I'm feeling better and better. I'm walking more than 25 miles a week (Red loves this part!) and I'm finally back doing some sewing (heck I even sold something on Etsy). I still have a stupid number of doctor's appointments (evidenced by the $70,000+ bill from the cancer center last month), but I'm finding a new normal.

I know I've said this before, but it bears saying again... Thank you to everyone who offered support! I can't tell you how touched both of us have been by all the folks who have stepped up to lend a hand, deliver a dinner, send a care package, give a hug, send a card or an email, cover a class or stop in to check and see how things are going. While we may have been able to do it without you, I can't imagine how! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Whew!

We just back from the oncologist and it was all good news! The PET/CT shows no evidence of cancer anywhere!!! Yippee!!! I am not free of treatment; I will continue on Herceptin, keep getting my tumor markers checked every three weeks and I'll get scanned every 4 months or so.

Just to be clear, I don't have the kind of cancer that gets cured. This is great news, but the likelihood is that the cancer will come back. The hope is that Herceptin will work for a good long time and with all this monitoring we'll catch any recurrence early and knock it right back.

I'll post up about the geeky details later.

Thanks for all the support and kind words over the past 6 months. It really helps knowing that I have so many people pulling for me.

We're Baaaaack...

Keith and I are back from our trip to the U.P. It was a nice relaxing trip! It really felt like summer up there. Here in Oakland it is easy to forget what season it is.

I am feeling the cumulative effects of chemo. I'm tired out and I've got a couple mouth sores (not so bad I can't eat, just a pain). I'm going to work on building my reserves back up. Lots of healthy eating, napping and walking.

The next couple of days will be a little nerve wracking. My PET CT on Monday will tell us a lot about what comes next for me. My fingers are crossed things look good. As long as things aren't growing I'm doing pretty good, but the best case would be that they can't see anything on the PET CT. That won't mean there is no cancer left, just that it is too small for them to see. PET CT's take "slices" every 2-3mm so tiny spots can be missed.

If you haven't ever had a PET CT, they're kinda cool. It's really two scans PET (positron emission tomography) and CT (computerized tomography) combined in one. They inject you with a radioactively labelled sugar (¹⁸F-FDG). This sugar is just like a regular glucose molecule except one of the -OH groups is replaced with a radioactive isotope of Fluorine. Cells in your body that are metabolically active will take up this sugar. After they inject you with the sugar, you just sit and relax for a while. Since you aren't exercising and using any of your muscles, and cancer is very active, the areas of cancer suck up the sugar faster than everything else. As the radioactive fluorine in the sugar decays it emits a positron. The big machine you slide into during the scan detects the positrons and correlates them with the CT. A CT scan is really just a very fancy set of X rays. When combined the radiologist can see the hot spots from the the PET scan and can see where those hotspots are located within your body/organs with the CT scan. The images are really pretty cool. Maybe I'll include some in my next post.

After the PET CT you'll be slightly radioactive. It won't last long. The half-life of this isotope of fluorine isn't long (an hour and a half or so). The notes you get will instruct you to stay away from babies and make sure to flush the toilet 2x after you pee for the next 24 hours.

I'll post again on Tuesday or Wednesday, after I get the results. Visualize clear scans!

Great Weekend and a Successful Drip!

Keith and I (and Red) had a great weekend up in redwood country. Trinidad is a gorgeous little town. We hiked almost 12 miles on Saturday!?! I was pretty stiff after that over-achievement.

After a lot of agita and bone soup, I got my 6th round of chemo today. My platelet count was back up in the normal range, but of course there was a hitch. I had a bit of a scare when the nurse said that my white blood cell count was low and he'd paged the doctor. Ugh! I got stressed. In the end my doctor approved chemo. When she came in to talk to me she said, "well your blood counts look really good". Of course I asked her about my WBC count and she said "I'm not worried about it, you're on chemo, its going to get low". That sounds dismissive, but it wasn't; it was reassuring.

In other news, my liver enzymes were all within normal range and my tumor markers are also in the normal range too! Neither is a guarantee, but they are all good signs. I'm nervously excited for my scans in July.

The doctor cleared me for the trip to Michigan! I just need to be careful not to get sick. I have a script for antibiotics just in case and I'll keep an eye on my temperature.