Follow up 5 weeks post double mastectomy/getting ready for chemo

Well, things are going good. I have almost full range movement of my arms. I am not allowed to swim yet since  the incisions have not completely healed. I've had 3 fills (1 in surgery, 2 after) and I will have 2 more fills. The fills are 2oz each time, each side. There really is no pain just a little discomfort for 24 hours after. I have an expander placed under my muscle in my chest on both sides. It feels like a tight tank top and it is not soft and kinda hard but my body has adjusted to it well. I found myself lieing on my side the other night-yea...the small joys in life! So how do they fill me you ask? There are ports which are best described as a rubber top that covers a hole into the expander. The Dr. punctures it with needle and them slowly fills the expander. Because it is a rubber type material, the hole closes once the needle is taken out so no fluid is lost. Do I feel it, nope. Is it freakish? Yep. I keep my eyes closed.

My CAT/PET came up clear. Meaning there are no tumors or lesions in my body right now. Does it mean there is no cancer in my body? No. It can only pick up fast dividing cells of a certain size so I could have cancer cellS floating around in me waiting. That's what chemo and radiation are for...to kill these single cells floating. What I did find out is I have gall stones. F*&k! Really, one more thing! They don't bother me but they are triggered by fatty foods and alcohol....another reason to eat healthy. Nothing to worry about unless they bother me, so says the Dr. He also told me I need to have a colonoscopy! He says women over the age of 45 should start having them. Because of my issues, I should start earlier. He suggested doing it this year since my deductible has been met...he suggested Dec. 30th.  I have news for him.... I have plans and they don't involve him looking up my butt on Dec. 30th.

Chemo is a done deal. I go in on the 29th to have my chemo port put in. This is out patient surgery but I'm still under so I don't see or feel anything. The port will be placed below my collarbone about 2 inches on my right side. It will be under the skin so no one will see it. It will only be a small bump maybe the size of a penny. It has a tube that runs from it into a large vein that runs from my neck and chest into my heart area. The force of my heart pumping, pushes the drug quicker thru my veins, that way it dispenses the drug quicker into my blood system causing less problems for my vein near the port entry. The severity of the drugs used cause serious damage to your veins, collapsing them if they are a smaller vein. The port will also be used to collect blood samples and if medicine is administered, it is another way to receive it quicker.

The chemo regime I am on is called ACT. Adriamycin, Cytoxan, Taxol. How aggressive is this chemo cocktail group, apparently strong, which scares me. I will be given one type of medicine for a certain time then work to the next one for the  last of the sessions. This will be every 2 weeks on Thursday at 9:00am. It will take a few hours for the injection and then I go home. There are a few things I have to do to get myself ready for the procedure each time which I'll cover in another blog. This regime will continue for 4 months or 8 sessions. I will lose all my hair after the 2nd session or 14 days in. I lose everything.....eyebrows, eyelashes, arm hair, leg hair, and yea, down there too, that hair. Freakish thought with all this. I'm OK with losing the head hair but losing my eyebrows and eye lashes is what bothers me the most. I assume I can pencil in my brows and wear fake eye lashes but what a hassle.
I've told the kids and we all have been working thru this. Been hat shopping with the kids and found some cute ones. What is going to kill me and I tear up each time I think about this is, I will be bald for Alex's high school graduation. Someone suggested a wig. I don't know about going that route but I'll look into it. You all know me, I'm a low maintaince type person.

Someone said to me, your so positive through this. Your amazing. Well as I responded, possibly to you reading, what else am I going to do? Sit in a corner and cry (I've already done that btw). It is what it is. There's nothing I can change other then go thru all this crap to make sure my odds of reoccurence are low. Yea, it bums me out watching life go on around me...people taking trips, having dinner parties, working at sporting events that my kids are in and I can only sit on the sideline watching and sometimes I can't even do that. It does get depressing but it will be over soon. I just hope the side effects will be very low so my life doesn't stop. The nurse was saying my greatest side effect will be exhaustion, especially the few days after the injection. Maybe I can take Ambien continously for 3 days and just sleep through this part and wake up on Monday "new". Not going to happen so I gotta deal with it. My other worry is the mouth sores that are a side effect. Because the drug attacks soft tissue, this tissue is more at risk for irritation. I get cold sores easily and I'm terrified of this. Sometimes they say it can be so bad you can't talk or swallow since the sores are everywhere in your mouth and down the throat. I've been researching and people say sucking on ice or Popsicles during the time of receiving the drug helps. Also rinsing with baking soda and water 4 times a day before during and after the treatment.
I have so far 6 drugs that have been prescribed for me to counter the side effects of chemo. I will also be getting shots of other drugs that are to counter the side effects. All of these are either to make the port area numb before treatment, stop nausea, stop vomiting, calm anxiety, increase bone density, etc., etc. So how am I supposed to keep track of all this? A chemo calendar is made for me that I follow. It lists by day and by hour what I'm supposed to take. It is my bible to get thru this.
I have also made my own calendar since I have to plan my life around 2 week intervals. We start the chemo specifically planned around alex's graduation. I will be healthy, but bald, for this major event. Unfortunately I will be sick on 4th of July, bummer. Life goes on.

Yikes I forgot to tell you my Oncotype DX score was 9! BIG DEAL. This test takes the tissue from the tumor and they do their magic thing of dividing genes/cells and can determine the likelihood of cancer reoccurrence in my body from the original tumor. My score was very low (based on 1-100 score). This score usually helps women determine if they need chemo or not. Low score, like mine, no chemo. So why am I having chemo still? My tumor was huge, 11cm. That's what throws me into this more aggressive zone. It was a lazy tumor that enjoyed hanging around the party zone in my breast and just grew there. It finally had some drunk stragglers who wandered off and passed out in my lymph node, only making it to the front entry of the node.
Again a mental reassurance to me I am going to live a long and healthy life if I do everything I can now to treat it. It is still surreal thinking I had cancer and if not caught when I did, I could have died. Yea, yea, you could cross the street tomorrow and get hit by a car. But to have a piece of paper placed in front of you giving your mortality statistics within 5 years (50% death rate!!) and 10 years, is possibly the worst mind blowing thing I have ever faced. It's just hard to grasp. Other people have cancer. Other people have double mastectomies and chemo, not me.

So that's it for now. Doing fine. Enjoying all the free lunches. That's one benefit of going through this, everyone wants to buy me lunch. Before I would have said, let's split, but now, what the heck, let them buy me lunch!