You Take the Good, You Take the Bad

Note: This was written on Friday, Sept. 30:

Five down, one to go! Hallelujah! Feeling mostly fine today. Trying to drink a ton of water and hopefully I can get through this round relatively unscathed, with no major complications and no hospital stays. I remain hopeful!

I had a rough couple of days emotionally leading up to it. I've been feeling so good and was just dreading feeling like crap again. I momentarily channeled my strong-willed toddler the night before and just plain didn't want to go yesterday. I hear all the time how positive and strong and brave I am. Some days that might be true. Some days it's not. But lately I'm just over it. Over it all. After a week out of the hospital, feeling like a normal mom going grocery shopping, a fun trip to the park Dan and James and with friends coming over Sunday night to hang with the whole family, I had a hard time preparing for not feeling well, for James going away again. This wasn't how the summer was supposed to go. BUT, I don't have a choice. I'm not going to NOT go and, after letting it out the other night I snapped back to reality and am continuing to put one foot in front of the other. Do what I need to do. Follow orders and keep moving forward. 

I have several friends going through cancer treatment, unfortunately, and we have real conversations -- about the hard parts and the frustrating situations -- as well as encouraging other. Some days I feel like a big faker, keeping my gripes to myself and just sharing the facts on here. But know that I'm not always positive and I'm not always strong and the continued support of you all out there, in addition to my incredible husband and kids here at home, helps more than you know. Thank you. A friend in treatment said she was advised to cry in the shower and keep a smile on her face out in the world. I try to follow that as well and it helps keep me in a good place. But so do all of you. Thank you. 

Back to the facts. I had a follow-up with the cardiologist this week. My EKG looked fine and he put me on an anti-inflammatory to help keep the fluid from reoccurring. He said the fluid didn't show any sign of infection, etc. and is just a symptom of the cancer itself. I'll do a heart ultrasound in a month and hopefully there won't be any fluid. 

Got some news yesterday. When this all first started, I first went to get checked because of some pain in my right breast and an area that felt like a muscle knot kind of. Long story short, when all of the results came back and they said it was cancer, my midwife (full disclosure: she's also my landlord) met me at a park by the house to go over all my results with me. In the paperwork it said my left side was clear. But I didn't remember them doing a mammogram on the left. She showed me where it said my left was clear. We looked at the order and she had ordered both sides. Huh. DID they check my left? I was SURE I didn't remember that. I thought I was nuts and we moved on. Maybe they checked it? My head was spinning with all this information and I just wasn't sure. 

I was handed off to who are now my surgeon and oncologist. Everyone did exams on both sides. Left felt fine. That was that. A conversation with my surgeon about six weeks ago was about my surgery and whether or not I was going to do both sides, which I've always intended to. She started flipping through my chart to look at what info we had on the left side and I told her about not being sure about the mammogram. SO, she ordered a bilateral breast MRI. 

It got postponed the last time I was in the hospital and we did it on Monday. The test results came back yesterday with mixed news. Good news first -- the original mass in my right breast is GONE. The chemo is working. The mass is gone. Since the mass isn't the only thing we were working with -- the entire breast showed cancer cells, more good news is that I'm down to roughly 15% of diseased tissue, especially with yesterday's and my last chemo yet to go. The hope has always been to greatly reduce or eliminate the visual presence of cancer before surgery since it was so widespread within the breast (but so far contained within it). So, the plan is working. 

Unfortunately, there is a mass on the left side. It's very tiny. Less than a centimeter. I'm left to assume it's always been there and is so small because of the chemotherapy. But we don't know. I'm more convinced than ever that I was right about that mammogram and they hadn't performed it on the left side.  Either way, it's there. We don't know if it's contained within a duct or inflammatory like the right side. There's a chance it is just a cyst and isn't cancer at all, I suppose. I have no symptoms visually on the left as I do/did on the right and, even knowing it was there my oncologist couldn't find it during an exam yesterday. I have a biopsy scheduled for next week, then we'll have a lot more answers and my surgeon can truly make her plan of attack.

If it HAS always been there, treatment would have been the same. Exactly the same. So, technically it's not a big deal. It will change surgery, my recovery time, radiation, etc. so there are a lot of variables. 

Update: It's now Sunday afternoon. I never quite got a chance to read through and post this Friday. Doing OK still. Sleepy and blah, but not bad. Just have to get through the next couple of days and hopefully I'll be coming out the other side and looking toward #6. My biopsy is early Thursday morning. Hopefully not as uncomfortable as the last one, but maybe it will seem like nothing after all the poking and prodding I've endured since then! Happy October, everyone. It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- thanks for all the love and support.