Keep me company as I travel thru my journey facing breast cancer again.

Why would anyone want to read about someone else's problem when you have plenty of your own? Maybe one day a loved one, a friend, or you will be diagnosed with breast cancer. My blog might offer insite into cancer resources, thoughts, questions to ask, or guidance in helping you deal with this disease. These are my experiences and suggestions. Every breast cancer is different. If you are touched by breast cancer, be sure to consult your Dr. for direction in treatment.

I equate my blog to the emergency evacuation instruction the flight attendants do before you take off on an airplane. Nobody pays attention to them but when your plane is about to crash you think, "sh*t, why didn't I pay more attention to them? Which color cord do I pull first again?" We have so many things going on in our lives that one more thing to dwell on that doesn't apply to us right now may not be important but when it does, we wish we would have paid attention.

My blog is something you might read a couple times or maybe follow. Hopefully you gain some knowledge about breast cancer, in particular, Invasive Lobular Carcinoma (ILC). It is the 2nd most common type of invasive breast cancer however it only accounts for approx. 10% of all invasive breast cancers. It is the silent breast cancer. It is generally not detected with a mammo but rather an ultrasound. Invasive Lobular Carcinoma (ILC) is what I have been diagnosed with. My suggestion to every woman who is of mammo age insist on an ultrasound with your mammos.
UPDATE 3/2011
I have had my bilaterial mastectomy and I am recovering. ILC is a sneaky cancer as I said above. My various Dr.'s here and at UCSF confirmed the size of my tumor should be between 2.5cm-3.5cm with possibilty but not most likely, 7cm. After my surgery, my tumor was confirmed to be 11cm. My Dr.'s are very knowledgeable and are on top of things. This is simply the truth about ILC. I had mammos every 6 months, ultra sounds, and MRI's. With all of these, it was not picked up until 1/2011. The good news, if you can call it that, only 1 sentinel node out of 2 has micromastic findings and 5 aux. nodes were negative.

Be sure to start my adventure from the blog history on the right. I have tried to bold points to make it easier to extract the important information. If there is anything you get out of this blog, refer to my Dr.'s listed below if you know someone who has been diagnosed with breast cancer in the East Bay. These Dr.'s; Dr. Gottlieb, Dr. Wotowic, and Dr. Sherman are my 3 musketeers....all for 1 and 1 for all!

January 5, 2012

My Last Post and the Fairy Tale Ending

My last radiation treatment was November 28, 2011. By then my skin was blistered and dark brown into my armpit. When I looked in the mirror I thought there was no way this was going to heal and leave no scaring behind on my skin. I used Burt's Bee's Belly Butter on my skin to keep it from drying out. Slowly, week by week my skin improved. It is now January 5, 2012 and my skin is completely recovered. I do have a faint darker shade of skin into my armpit but all the blisters, redness and yucky feeling is gone. I still use the belly butter each night to keep my skin soft. Amazing how the body wants to heal and with a little help, it does.

Things are good considering I was a Stage 3A breast cancer with Invasive Lobular Carcinoma that was 11 cm large with 1 sentinel lymph node micrometastases involvement. I have started the continuation treatments, Lupron shot every 3 months, Tamoxifen every day, Vitamin D once a week, and shortly I will begin the Zometa shot once every 6 months. All of these (including the double mastectomy, Aux node removal of 4, chemo, and radiation) have brought my 5 year survival percentage into the mid to upper 90th %. If I had chosen to do nothing, my survival percentage in 5 years was 50%. A very scary thought. Am I worried about the side effect of all these extremely powerful drugs on my life? I am. As I sat in the funeral a couple weeks back for someone who had died from throat cancer, I thought to myself the chances of the side effects from these drugs vs. not doing anything is worth it. I want to live and if I have to endure aches and pains so be it. I am doing everything I can to keep myself healthy. The holidays were really the last time I have drank. I am careful about the foods I eat. I am exercising just about everyday. I do Pilates 2x's a week to keep my muscles, ligaments, tendons stretched. Surprising I have not lost a lot of weight but rather my body has become fitter with more muscle. I can feel in the fit of my clothes my weight has repositioned and it's a good thing. I feel healthy....except for the stomach flu that hit on Christmas Eve ( It was like reliving chemo all over again-a silent reminder to stay healthy).

I am also trying to keep myself less stressed about things. Both Frank and I have decided life needs to be much simpler and we need to save more for a rainy day....or maybe a small house in Sonoma or one of our favorite hippy spots, Inverness....we can daydream! The materialistic things in our life really don't matter.  Sounds simple but so many things get caught up in your day to day living you can lose focus on the simplicity of just being happy.

Cancer has given me a 2nd chance on life and I'm not going to waste it. I have come far in the last year. My first hint of trouble was January 3, 2011 when I had my mammo and ultrasound appt and a suspicious area was spotted with the ultrasound. What a journey it has been. A lot of it seems to be a distant memory but I see pictures of me during chemo, wow I was really bald! Now my hair is growing back and I literally look like a different person, the new me and I like that person more. So here I end my blog for now. I might do updates to this post as I continue with my reconstruction surgeries ( I still need to change out from saline to silicone and have the finishing touches done) but really there's not much more I need to write about because I'm not looking back. I truly think I will never have to deal with cancer again.

So, I want my last sentence of my last page of my blog to end with the fairy tale ending, "and she lived happily ever after......The End."

 Update 8/29/2012
I'm still here! Healthy and happy :-). Tomorrow I have my final surgery, saline implant to silicone. I am very happy to finally be done-well almost done. I will have the finishing touches, or I should say details still to do. Lupron shots are easy, no side effects. Zometa is OK. I've had 2 infusions so far. I have found there is an ache in my neck and down my spine that doesn't go away but it's manageable so not much to complain.
 I haven't checked on my blog for months. Maybe that's a sign I'm healing emotionally. I do still think of "it" every day. I don't mean to but the thought just creeps in. Now it's maybe once a day so soon enough I will forget. My breast cancer Dr said I'm in the "bell curve" right now. I reach the peak 3 years out from my double mastectomy then my chances of reoccurance begin to drop. Technically I'm only out about a year and half out but I'm pretty certain I'm good. 
So, good luck to you if your in the midst of this cancer mess. You will get through it like I did and you will be a better person because of it. 
My next update? At the top of my "bell curve". Talk then!


June 25, 2013. I'm still here and healthy! Just checking in. Don't want anyone to think something happened to me when I don't write updates. Enjoying every day of life. Next off the bucket list, hiking in Switzerland-tomorrow! Yes I have 4 teenagers and all their schedules but so what if they miss a practice or two. They are old enough to know right from wrong and with help from a sitter they are fine.....so Frank and I are off to find Heidi in the Alps and practice our yodeling (haha). You only live once.   
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