Photo finish

Last November I blogged about what my mom wore to chemotherapy when she had breast cancer a couple years ago. I decided that when I went for my own treatment, rather than dress strictly for comfort alone, I would also try to put together and wear outfits that made me feel good about the way I looked, sort of as an act of empowerment. I also planned to take pix throughout.

But I didn’t take pictures.

Mind you, I actually did manage to dress pretty cute for every single infusion. In fact, chemo-day was practically the only time I donned real clothes, the only time I wore my wig or tried to put on any make-up. Most of the rest of the time I spent in baggy sweats, bald, no make-up, laying around and trying not to completely cave in.

On chemo-days, though, I made the monumental effort to look better, and it did make me feel stronger. But whenever I would catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror I was downright unrecognizable, though to someone who didn’t already know me, well, they might never have guessed I was in the midst of cancer treatment. Dear Michael used to lovingly joke I had better start looking worse otherwise people wouldn’t believe I was sick.

But all the same, I never felt like posting a picture.

I had wanted to take photographs during treatment as a sort of visual record of the experience, something tangible to illustrate the evolution I’d inevitably be going thru. See, when I was obese I never had any pictures taken. For almost ten years of my life there’s scarcely any evidence of me existing. I’m not there in the holiday photos…barely any wedding pix, certainly no candid vacation albums. So many memories are just in my head without anything to show or share. I virtually edited myself right out of my own life. And once I lost the weight I realized what a shame that was, such a waste…how sad. I vowed I would never do that again.

But when reality hit and the chemo side-effects took their inevitable toll the thought of seeing all that laid out in living color, let alone plastered in the blogosphere, became much too painful -- I completely changed my mind. In light of what was going on it just didn’t seem important. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to memorialize any of that in pictures for posterity.

After treatment ended and the summer months wore on I still didn't want any photos, for here or anywhere else. Understandable, I’d been thru a lot…but…would I ever? I secretly mourned the possibility that I might not. That would feel like yet another loss to cancer amongst so many others.

But then, very slowly, I started to feel a little better, and subsequently my appearance in the mirror reflected that back to me. Amazingly even as the whole pulmonary nodule episode unfolded and wracked me with fear to my core…despite even that, bit by bit I started to vaguely recognize myself.

Day by day I look more and more like me – and I’ve decided whether it looks like the same me as before is totally beside the point at the moment. What really matters is I am alive…I’m living my life and getting well again.

Now what???

Today is my 47th birthday. We’re not doing anything particularly special, oh, they’ll be cake and a nice meal, some presents from Michael & the kids. But I didn’t want a big tadoo, just a regular birthday like I’ve always had.

That might sound strange, I mean, shouldn’t I be dancing in the streets since pretty much dodging the mother of all bullets, what with no lung metastasis?

Incidentally, I spoke to my oncologist last night (she calls me at home pretty often, isn’t that nice?)…anyway, the final report came in from the “lung biopsy that wasn’t”. According to the CT scan all the pulmonary nodules seem to have essentially resolved themselves with the exception of one – there’s no evidence of any of the rest. Hard to believe, isn’t it? The lone hold out got 1cm larger than it was from a prior scan, but that could be explained by how CT imaging is sort of sliced. Imagine an orange, if you sliced it towards the end it would appear smaller in circumference than if you sliced it in the middle. So this last nodule might even have gotten smaller and it just didn’t appear that way.

The plan is to re-scan in a few months. I asked her if it was okay to wait until after the winter holidays and she gave me a resounding yes. She said we can be VERY confident it’s not a fast growing metastasis, and pretty darn confident it’s not any kind of metastasis at all…nor is it likely to be a new primary cancer either. All things considered, I’m moving on and not worrying about this anymore.

So why am I not celebrating my ass off?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Perhaps there are phases you inevitably pass thru when you have cancer, and I've sort of suffered from arrested development, if you will. The way I presently see it there's four phases:

1. The discovery and diagnosis stage, when you are finding out what you have and how to treat it, if it’s spread and what your prognosis might be. It’s a crash course in your own particular cancer situation and frought with the kind of decisions that no earthly person should ever have to make.

2. Then there’s the treatment phase itself…surgery, chemo, radiation, hormonal and other ongoing therapies. For some of us, all or part of the treatment may continue for many years, but chances are the intensive remedies like surgery and chemo will be relatively short-lived, in the grand scheme of things.

3. After all of that comes the healing stage where you go thru a physical recovery from your treatment. You may need to adjust to a drastically changed body, severe side effects from medications will gradually diminish, wounds will heal. Permanent damage will be assessed and you will learn to manage various conditions and any ongoing medications.

4. Finally you enter what is hopefully the last phase of your voyage – continuing on with your life in the wake of having had cancer. Some of us have to do that part while knowingly living with cancer, some of us get to do it “cancer-free” – hopefully for a long, long time. This is when you begin to work on recovering from the emotional wounds, maybe the most difficult recuperation process of them all.

For the average woman with breast cancer it takes about 9 or 10 months from discovery to reach that 4th phase. Clearly with all the obstacles thrown in my path my journey has been quite a bit longer. It’s been nearly 18mos now since discovering the lumps in my breast. So even tho technically my last treatment was at the end of April, I’ve been stuck, left in a holding pattern while waiting to find out whether or not the cancer had already spread. Now that pause button has been released and it’s time to fully move into the fourth phase.

Physically I’m left with the aforementioned pulmonary nodule, major scars, vast areas of numbness, mild lymphedema, only a little hair and some extra pounds (tho less since I’ve lost a bit). Menopause has been tolerable so far, but I am experiencing some body aches and crankiness from my estrogen deficit. Fatigue is lifting, but still there.

Emotionally? I don’t even know where to start, thus the title of this post and why I’m not exactly partying. I think it is all hitting me full force now…OMG, I had cancer?!?! I have radically changed. I will never be the same. There’s nothing left to distract me from facing this head on anymore….nothing to learn, no treatment decisions, no physical pain, no wounds left to heal, save for the giant gaping one in my psyche.

So it seems I am now, finally, a breast cancer survivor. On October 1st, the first day of breast cancer awareness month, it will be 18 months exactly since I sat down to nurse my toddler son, and with my breast in hand found the lump that would destroy my life as I knew it, leaving me standing where I am now….pretty beat up, sort of stunned, more than a little lost, and very, very much alive.

Biopsy update!

Hee-hee, they couldn't do the biopsy -- that one big nodule was SMALLER, alot smaller....no lung biopsy for me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:D

I think there's still some pulmonary nodules sprinkled around in there (I was pretty out of it yesterday, used my Ativan quite liberally) and I'm sure there will be some scan comparison, yada yada (why yes, I did just "yada-yada" CAT scans) but at this point it looks like the next course of action will be to just wait a while and scan again.

However, ringing in my ears over and over is what the pulmonologist said, "Cancer doesn't shrink all by itself" -- meaning as of right now this is VERY doubtfully cancer!!!!!!!!

:D

Don your party hats girls (and boys) -- let's have a virtual partay. I'll bring the wine and chocolate ;)

You know, I really do wish I could have a real party and invite all you lovely bloggy friends....seeing all your well wishes made me smile, made me cry, and made me feel so much less alone. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart (or should I say from the bottom of my as of now cancer-free lungs!!!!!)

I've got an appointment but wanted to post this ASAP.

Have a wonderful day....I know I will :)

MIA, lung biopsy tomorrow

Apparently I'm collecting biopsies -- hey, it'll be all the rage, just you wait and see. I've had two since my last post, ones I don't even think I mentioned were a possibility -- a simple skin biopsy for a recently suspicious mole on my foot and a biopsy of my reconstructed breast. I discovered some lumps in the breast and had them ultrasounded months ago, but they lit up on one of my many scans so off for a biopsy I went.

Thankfully both of these were benign.

Let's hope that good news wagon keeps on rolling because tomorrow is the BIG ONE, the lung biopsy. It will be done with a needle, and guided by some sort of imaging (more radiation!) -- but there is almost a 50/50 chance of lung collapse which really freaks me out. I'm told it is often not a big deal, that only rarely is a chest tube needed (2%)...but just the idea of it all has me scared out of my wits.

So scared, in fact, that I've been deep, deep in denial about the whole thing. I haven't even given it much of a thought until tonight at the eleventh hour, if you will. I also haven't written a word, poetic, fiction or blog-wise, in ages. Writer's block is a sure sign I'm in pure animal survival mode, off hiding someplace and licking my metaphoric and soon-to-be all too real wounds. I'm not sure silence is good for me so despite the fact that I want to pull the covers up tighter over my head I came here. I need to shed some light into the dark places.

And to that end, this is what I'm hoping: I'm hoping that when I arrive at the hospital tomorrow and they set up all the machines and start scanning me to find that one large nodule that the radiologist thinks he can "get" that it is magically gone. After that they'll keep scanning and all the little nodules will have disappeared, must have been some sort of mysterious inflamation due to the pneumonia I may or may not have had. Nothing to biopsy, sorry to waste your time, you can go home now.

The pulmonary guy I saw at Sloan Kettering last week thinks that is what this is, just some residual inflamation. My oncologist keeps saying this can't be metastasis, it just can't be, as if she is practically willing it not to be. My 47th birthday is in less than two weeks. I really need to have something to celebrate this year.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, 'kay? Oh, and as usual, to all my dear friends new & old, call me bitch for luck ;)

Going nuts...

I wish there was upbeat or even definitive news to share, but there’s not.

I wish I could say I am doing well in the interim, but I’m not.

The doctors, in their infinite wisdom, have now decided that I should wait for at least a few more weeks before scheduling the lung biopsy. This is likely because A) they’re hoping the pulmonary nodules will have shrunk and/or disappeared, or B) they will have grown, thus making an accurate biopsy easier. Let’s go with option A, shall we? Either way, while the waiting is nerve wracking I’m not complaining…the idea of having my lungs poked with a needle isn’t something I’m chomping at the bit to experience. I can wait.

On the other hand, emotionally I feel like I’m falling slowly into a pit. I don’t sleep well, even with pharmaceutical aid, and I cry at the drop of a hat. Some days are almost normal, shockingly so, actually. But then there are days when I just can’t seem to control my emotions for even a minute.

What’s probably not helping is that I’ve now got two injections for ovarian ablation under my belt….(literally, that’s where they give you the shot, in your lower abdomen)…and I’ve been taking Arimidex, the estrogen blocking drug I’ll be on for at least the next five years. While I was in “chemopause” before, I suspect that this new hormonal deficit has pushed me a bit over the edge. No estrogen, no mood control at the moment.

To top it all off lymphedema has acted up in earnest…I now have visible swelling in my lower arm. I am not handling that well...it just freaks me out. But I keep doing my home care, even tho it’s not having any effect. I can’t do simple activities in the way I’m accustomed to and it is making me feel suddenly very old, as if piece by piece life as I once knew it has been chipped away.

The one year anniversary of my mastectomy was July 27th. I remember last year as I laid there on the operating table waiting to go under the anesthesia I tried to stay focused on the future, almost as if willing myself to be fast forwarded to a time beyond what I was about to endure. I comforted myself with the promise that by the same time next year it would all be behind me…that in whatever shape I was left physically at least the cancer journey would be over.

Not so. Maybe that was a foolish idea anyway.

You know, I probably could have written the shortest entry in my entire blogging history by just saying this: things totally suck.

I’m sorry for the long absence, and now the totally depressing post, but that’s pretty much what’s going on in a nutshell. A really crappy little nutshell.

Holding pattern

In the ten days since my last post I've seen and/or talked to several doctors. Bloodwork, scans and reports are being passed around between radiologists, oncologists and pulmonologists (that's alot of "gists" isn't it?)....and some decision will be made this week or next as to when I'll have the lung biopsy. I do know that they will try to do a guided needle aspiration type thing and sample the largest of my pulmonary nodules, but it is only 9mm, so if that doesn't work they have to go in a little more invasively, doing a procedure called VATS (video-assisted thorascopic surgery). Let's hope that is not necessary.

Meanwhile I am all over the map emotionally. I have good moments when I can actually put this aside and function almost normally, even laugh a little or enjoy myself somewhat. Then in the blink of an eye I can just as easily plummet down to the depths of despair.

It's just so hard to believe that this could be happening. Even more so because it has certainly been one thing after another for quite a while now, to an almost ridiculous point. For the last year, each time I went thru something difficult, like waiting for the diagnosis or trying to choose what type of surgery to have...facing the skin necrosis...enduring chemo...each time I would try and focus on a spot in the future when it would be over. But I have yet to get to that place, as my readers well know, because something else always seems to happen. When I'm done with one disaster I barely have a moment to take a breath before I'm trying to get thru another calamity, one day at a time.

I'd like to say that I've learned from this not to put life on hold, to live in the moment. And to some degree I suppose I have gotten a bit better at that. But these relentless issues each feel so acute that it's hard not to become all-consumed by them.

So here I am, nearing the one year anniversary of my mastectomy (7/27) and I don't feel in the least like I've been able to put any of this behind me, even a little. In fact, I think these unending medical issues have dramatically had the opposite effect, I've barely even scratched the surface of dealing emotionally with the fundamentals -- like that I have cancer in the first place, or that I "lost" a breast.

(You know, I am not all that fond of saying I lost my breast -- for one thing it sounds like I misplaced it and the thing could eventually turn up...and for another, I did have reconstruction and tho that didn't turn out as planned there's still a reasonable facsimile of a breast on my chest, albeit much the worse for wear.)

Anyway...

I'm holding on as best I can and some days, heck, some minutes, it's harder than others. Today as I read the numerous well-wishes on the comments of my last post I felt lighter, a little stronger. That's a HUGE blessing. To all of you who made that happen, my deepest gratitude. You've made so much of this saga more tolerable, no small feat, I assure you. Thank you.

Dodging bullets

I’ve read the last CT report myself now. It's not good. The original nodules “decreased in size and/or conspicuity compared to the last CT”. I take that to mean they might have decreased in size, or they may just be inconspicuous at the moment – like they could still be there exactly the same and are just not obvious this time around. But either way, the next part is what’s more important: “Bilateral pulmonary nodules, the majority of which were not present on the prior examination of 5/19/10, suspicious for (parenchymal) metastases.”

That word is on a report with my name on it -- metastases.

These new nodules came up quick…in less than 5 weeks. They have all appeared shortly after chemo, so despite all that poison pumped into my body they managed to develop.

I think I’m screwed.

From the day I first found the lumps there was a little part of me that thought I wasn’t going to live to be that ripe old age I once believed was a given. Yeah sure, everyone talks about how breast cancer is so treatable, that’s it’s practically a chronic disease. But that’s just media hype…it’s what people want to believe. And the idea certainly was that chemo would hopefully take care of any possibility for distant spread. Of course the truth they don’t want you to understand is that chemo only helps in about 30% of cases.

I guess it looks like I’m probably in that other 70%.

Once you have cancer you don’t take too much about life for granted. But still, I thought I’d have more disease-free time, you know? My fondest, most deepest wish was that I’d get to be around long enough so that Megan and Daniel would be grown up and on their own. But in my own mind, based on nothing scientific, I felt like it was a reasonable expectation to have 10 years. Okay, bare minimum was to have at least 5 solid years...by then Daniel would be Megan’s age now and I think she understands what she needs to in order to get thru what comes next…as much as any child can. But this is all happening way sooner than I thought…my Danny is still a baby to me now…not even 4 yet. It’s too soon for things to start going bad. I realized yesterday that I’ve been dealing with this for half his little life, he doesn’t remember a cancer-free mom. I wanted him to have more of a life with me being well. Every time I look at him, at both of them, my heart shatters and I cry. They’ve seen too many tears. Meggie keeps saying she thinks it will be okay. That it wouldn’t be fair if it wasn’t. How do I explain to a barely 9 year old child that life isn’t always fair, in fact, it can be incredibly, cruelly unfair?

If this is a metastasis then it is also fast growing and it sure didn’t seem to be effected by chemo. All that poison and these things popped up anyway. So while there are women who still manage to live for a “decent” amount of time with metastatic breast cancer, if you ask me, these fast growing suckers don’t bode well for me being one of them.

I had the PET scan Friday. The tech was a nice woman, we chatted about this and that beforehand, we had a few things in common. After the scan I swear her demeanor changed, but like she was trying to make sure it didn’t seem that way. Just like the mammogram tech’s manner changed last year, and the subsequent ultrasound tech…and then finally the radiologist doing the biopsy. They all knew but couldn’t say. I think the woman yesterday knew too.

But then again, maybe I’m crazy. I want to be crazy.

I can’t tell you how hard this is. I keep searching for some hope, I keep trying to figure out a way that this is not happening. Maybe this is not happening. I don’t want this to be happening. I find myself begging, please, don’t let this be happening.

I would like to keep hoping but I’m afraid to set myself up for being emotionally annihilated. And in my quiet moments of pure thought, like the center of a storm, the way this looks now is if by some miracle it turns out not to be lung metastasis I will have dodged the biggest bullet of a lifetime.

It's not looking so good

There is news, not definitive news but not good news. Here’s what I know:

The 2nd pulmonary doc received the written CT report yesterday but not the film disc itself – he won’t get that until today or tomorrow. The report says the original nodules may have decreased in size, but that there are now many new ones. He wants to review the films himself but he did suggest it looks like I might need a lung biopsy.

Saw my oncologist today – a woman who is usually the type that thinks nothing is wrong, quick to blow things off. She’s not blowing this off. She wants me to have a guided needle biopsy. The problem is there are so many nodules now and they are very small. However one of the new ones is 9mm and the radiologist she spoke to thinks he can get a sample. There are risks…like collapsed lungs and maybe permanent damage of some sort. I don't know about all that yet.

Oncologist also wants a PET scan, not so much to look at the nodules further but to see if there is anything in my bones, liver or brain. Bottom line is if the cancer already spread to those places there’s no point in doing a lung biopsy too. Save me from an invasive test since I’m going to die anyway.

What’s the treatment for lung metastasis? Oncologist says nothing more than I’m doing now…ovarian ablation and estrogen blocking drugs. Since the cancer would have spread while I was on chemotherapy there’s not much point in doing more. I wonder if that’s true or if there are other drugs…clinical trials, experimental things.

There is still a slight chance this is nothing more than an inflammatory response of some sort to something, but no one wants to wait and see anymore.

This doesn’t look good right now. I have a really bad feeling.

Yet I also keep thinking it can’t be happening. I can’t really be dying. Not so soon. Women with breast cancer that metastasizes to the lung don’t typically make it past five years. And who’s to say what kind of quality of life one has during that time. What if this is really it, the beginning of the end? How do I do this??? How do I leave my babies??? HOW?

Gotta stop for now, sorry. Will post when I can.

Towering Inferno

When I was in my early twenties the apartment building I was living in caught on fire in the middle of the night. I was able to get out unscathed, but had some scary moments during my escape. Waking up suddenly from a sound sleep only to see flames licking at your windows and thick columns of black smoke coming up thru the heating registers in the floor is a frightening experience, to say the least. I remember that everything seemed to move in slow motion and all the while I kept thinking, “This can’t be happening” – tho clearly it was. Even afterwards as I stood outside in the street and watched the firefighters try to control the 4-alarm blaze I kept having this feeling of reality being suspended; as if what I was witnessing wasn’t real.

Last year after I found the lumps in my breast it took several weeks to get a diagnosis. During most of that time I vacillated between thinking it would be nothing and fearing the worst. But even when I thought the news might be bad there was a significant part of my brain that reacted just like it did watching those flames burn my home…feeling like it couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t be.

But it was.

Now I’m waiting to find out if the pulmonary nodules in my lungs have grown…if the breast cancer has indeed spread. Perhaps as testament to either the power of hope or denial, I swing like a pendulum, back and forth, as to which way the outcome will go. On one level it’s hard to imagine more bad news coming my way…I mean really, enough is enough already, right? And yet on another level it’s hard to ignore the reality. Once your innocence is shattered it’s not as easy to maintain blind faith. I now know all too well that worst-case scenarios do happen. Buildings burn down. People get sick and sometimes cancer wins.

So I’m left wondering, am I merely standing here in a haze of disbelief watching the flames prepare to devour what’s left of my life, or do I get to escape the blaze again and regain some smidgen of a fundamental sense that there is goodness left for me in this world.

Oh, and let us not forget the third option…that while the nodules might not be a fast growing metastasis, they do end up still being there, same as before…their presence meaning I have yet more waiting to do before finally knowing with some degree of certainty if they are malignant or not…sort of like living in my own little corner of Purgatory rather than immediately being thrown into the definitive inferno much further south.

Meanwhile, this is me, still waiting…till next time.

Call waiting

(This does have a happy ending)

When I went in for a retest after a bad pap smear my doctor recommended I have a vaginal ultrasound and some blood work since having breast cancer puts me at higher risk for various reproductive cancers. The u/s tech said that unofficially everything looked fine and I was relieved.

I was told to make an appointment to get all the official results from the doctor in person, but if everything was fine I’d get a call before that instead, in which case I was supposed to cancel the unneeded appointment. So I made what I call the “in case of bad news appointment” but promptly put it out of my head. The second pap smear had come back clear and since the tech said the vag u/s looked good (and since I’ve got lung nodules to worry about) the whole thing slipped my mind.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday I got a call to confirm my “in case of bad news appointment”. My stomach dropped and I thought I was going to faint. I asked the woman who phoned if the doctor was there, I needed to speak to him. But he wasn’t in. So I asked for another doctor – any doctor. By this time I was crying. I told her I am a breast cancer patient and I know what needing this appointment really meant, that the news was bad. I begged her to please find me someone to talk to and get the results from by phone. She tried, I could hear the compassion in her voice – but there was no one there that was authorized to give, and I quote, “those kind of results” by phone.

I was supposed to go in today, but I had that CT scan for lung metastasis scheduled. The gynecologist and imaging place are too far from each other to go to both in the same day. Instead I was going to have to receive a call from the gynecologist on my cell, or wait the weekend for Monday. Neither choice was good, but I chose to get a cell phone call. Waiting an entire weekend was NOT an option.

After hanging up I sat in this house alone with my kids for the next ten minutes just weeping uncontrolably. After crying to Michael and freaking him out at work I called my mother, by that time, hysterical. She was outraged at how this was being handled. I felt that way too but was too upset to focus on that part of it. Mom asked me if she could call the doctor's office and try again to get the results. At almost 47 years of age I did the only thing I was capable of doing at that moment – I decided to go ahead and sic my 70-something mother on them. Apparently she raised holy Hell because within minutes the entire situation was resolved.

It was a mistake.

W.T.F?????

My ultrasound was completely normal. Completely. Normal. So was the blood work. It was, in a sense, a scheduling error. I was supposed to receive the “it’s nothing call” but mistakenly didn’t. So they were just calling to confirm the office appointment by default. The office manager phoned me to apologize. While I could have given her a piece of my mind instead I gave her a piece of my heart…I tearfully, VERY tearfully told her what I had just gone thru, that my young children had to see their mother become unglued yet again for nothing, my entire family was to be frightened yet again, for absolutely nothing. I said I don’t ever want this to happen to another woman. She promised me the system would be addressed.

What I went thru was excruciating, but in reality it lasted less than an hour. However in that hour I sure had time enough to consider many of the worst case scenarios...and now that I’ve had breast cancer, trust me, I have a bird’s eye view of what those kind of scenarios really look like, up nice and close.

I said this had a happy ending and it does, truly, for the most part. While at the moment I'm still reeling I am also hugely grateful beyond measure that this turned out to be a big fat nothing. The word relief doesn't begin to cover it. But sadly, happy endings aren’t quite what they used to be either. I'm still waiting for results next week about my lung scan. It seems forever more my happy endings will be diminished by the reality of just how temporary happiness can be, how easily it can disappear. All it takes sometime is a phone call.

What's new

Lung nodules -- back to square one…

We got a second opinion from another pulmonologist and he says something different than the first doctor – but of course. I need another CT scan to rule out a fast growing metastasis…which he thinks it will do, but still, I’m back to waiting and worrying again. Not that I wasn’t already doing that since I was in a holding pattern till September’s CT to see if the nodules grew anyway. But now I will have a scan sooner and hold my breath to see if they grew fast – which would be really, really bad. On the other hand, they could also have disappeared (she said w/fingers crossed) – which would be really, really good. Hopefully I can get the CT & answer next week. This second pulmonary guy is a cancer survivor himself so he won’t keep me waiting for results, at least on his part.

More medical stuff…

I’ve been having trouble with my eye…something called recurrent erosion. I had a corneal laceration about a dozen years ago that acts up sometimes – and it chose now to do so. My body has really bad timing lately. Understatement.

About that house we were buying…

It all fell thru, and truth be told we’re kinda relieved right now. It’s a long story (um, what isn’t in my life) and it came right down to the wire in a nail biting finale. But the bottom line is we’re way better off. For now we stay put.

However someone is moving…

My mother sold her house and is moving in a week! She’s renting an apartment until she finds the right condo. This has added some chaos as you can imagine. I am glad tho, as even her little house with it’s little yard was beginning to be a bit much for her to care for. Also, she’s going to try and find a place closer to us…it’s about a 40min drive to her town now.

Thus ends the updating…

Beyond that there’s not much to tell. Okay, that’s not really true…there’s always more to tell and I’m usually up for the job of telling it and then some. Lately tho I just feel sort of on hold and more than a little preoccupied. But I wanted to put up an entry since it's been a while and so I’ve filled it with all the newsy bits and probably little substance. It will have to do for now, better than nothing.

So, till next time, this is me hanging in there…waiting….

It's not bad news...

Just got back from seeing the pulmonary doctor, and while it's not perfectly wonderful news, it is totally not bad news either.

Definitely NOT bad.

According to him based on the CT scan there is nothing about my pulmonary nodules at the moment that appear specifically cancerous. The plan is to wait and watch them. Sometimes pulmonary nodules are immediately suspicious and have clear cancerous characteristics such as irregular edges. In those instances they require biopsy or surgery for confirmation right away. But some nodules, like mine, don’t possess any obvious criteria that indicates cancer. Plus mine are small enough that doing a needle biopsy is challenging and no one wants to start slicing into my lungs if the little buggers are a big fat nothing. So instead they monitor them to see if they change, if they grow. These nodules could be completely benign, could have been there for years without me knowing it. But unfortunately a pulmonary nodule that doesn’t start off looking suspicious can also still end up being cancerous eventually.

So if these nodules stay the same size they are considered stable and not likely to be any kind of threat. If they grow…well, that would be bad. I will have a CT scan in 4 months. Assuming they haven’t grown then my understanding is the CT scans continue every 3 or 4 months for two years. After that if there is still no change they cut back the scans to once or twice a year. For how long I don’t know. Oh, and the doctor said if it weren’t for my breast cancer history we’d only do the scans every year right from the start – even tho I am a former smoker. So they are watching me more carefully which somehow makes me feel both better and worse, you know? Like I’m comforted to know they are on top of this but nervous they think that’s necessary.

Over all the doctor was very positive…said he really doesn’t think this will turn out to be cancer. However, when asked, he said he can’t say for sure it isn’t. But he did repeatedly stress that in his opinion it won’t go that way. I want to hear that from another doctor so I will be getting a second opinion, just to be thorough and to ease my mind a bit further.

Like I said – it’s totally not bad news. It’s almost good news. Short of finding out the little buggers had disappeared, it’s probably the best news I could hope for. I guess I should be happy, but I think I’m still sort of processing this…it hasn’t sunk in yet. I’ve been so upset, so terrified that I think my body hasn’t fully come down from high alert, if that makes sense. And despite the positive outlook of the doctor it's hard not to see this as one more thing hanging over my head.

I need a vacation.

Last but by far not least -- I’m going to post personally on the comments thread from my previous blog entry but wanted to say a big gigantic thank you here till I get a chance to do that. People talk about how strong I am – and if there’s any truth to that I can honestly say a huge source of that strength has been this blog and the astonishing people who come here and lend me their compassion, support and love. It’s hard to describe how a disparate group of essentially strangers can make such an amazing impact on one life…but you each have, you’ll never know how much. Everyone who has ever offered me their kindness has made a difference, has touched my heart when I needed it most. You are all important to me and have carried me along when I thought I couldn’t go on. Thank you…thank you…thank you.

Here I go again

I don’t want to post this. I don’t want to be this person, the one for which every thing seems to go wrong. But apparently I am.

A recent CT scan shows there are two nodules on my lungs. I don’t know much else right now because I went into shock when the oncologist told me last night. I vaguely remember asking about lung metastasis and her saying that this would need to be watched for the next couple years.

Years???

It almost sounds like I didn’t/don’t have pneumonia. I saw a pulmonary guy when I was first diagnosed with the pneumonia, and he’s the one that ordered the second CT which I understood was to rule out lung damage from chemo. I wasn’t all that concerned…I mean, it seemed more like a sickness kind of thing, I ran a bit of a fever and just a few days after the antibiotics were finished I felt better. Not all better, but significantly improved.

Now from the sound of what my oncologist said this might have nothing to do with that…or maybe it wasn’t pneumonia in the first place…or…I don’t know – I’m totally confused.

Thanks to Google I know some key questions to ask when I see the pulmonary guy again on Tuesday. I also now know that it’s very possible to have no definitive answers with pulmonary (lung) nodules as my oncologist seemed to be saying…that these may be in fact a wait and see, watch if they grow or change kind of thing.

I’m not sure I can take some kind of “wait and see” crap.

I’m not sure how to make it till Tuesday.

I’m not sure how much more of anything I can take.

I wish I could leave that last “cancer-free” blog entry up here. I wish I could still be the woman who posted that. But I’m not. Right now I don’t even feel like the woman who started this blog…I’m certainly not the woman I thought I’d be at this stage of my life.

I don’t know who I am. I just know I have two nodules on my lungs. And that I want to scream and smash something.

Luckily, I have pneumonia

I guess chemo wanted to have one more parting shot at me. I've probably been battling this for a few weeks now but the doctor kept saying my symptoms (shortness of breath, slight chest pain) were side effects from the chemo. I should have insisted on getting things checked, but I wanted to believe her.

However a couple days ago I started to run a fever on and off and I realized that can't be good. The nurse practitioner thought ruling out a pulmonary embolism would be a good idea due to my genetic history and the CAT scan showed I have pneumonia instead. I should have listened to my gut and been more proactive.

I'm on antibiotics and resting...feeling pretty miserable. But compared to the last time I had pneumonia 9 years ago, this is a picnic. Although the end result last time was hard to beat :)

One thing after another on this journey, huh? It's almost hard to fathom. Yet recently there have been a few women I know of in the breast cancer community that have received more troubling news of varying degrees. So when I went back to the doctor's office after learning the CAT scan showed no blood clot and the doctor greeted me with, "As you know there's no clot, but we did see a little something on your lung," I totally froze and immediately thought the worst --as in lung metastasis. When he then said the word pneumonia I wanted to kiss him...or kick him, either way, I was relieved.

So I'll take pneumonia. I'll take SVT's and necrosis...I'll take all the lousy side effects chemo has plagued me with. I'll even take lymphedema (reluctantly). Yeah, I know, it doesn't work that way, a lesser evil today doesn't mean I get a pass on a greater one around the corner. But right now I'm actually feeling pretty lucky to have pneumonia. How often can one say that?