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After my doctor appointments yesterday I was going to do a quick Instagram/Facebook post to update all my friends and family how things are going and what are the next steps in my treatment process. However, seeing as there are so many issues involved when you have a team of four doctors, the length of that post would be like a blog entry... so here it is! I will try to make it as simple as possible since I know many of you are not well versed in breast cancer... PTL!
Let's break it down in terms of doctors.
The first two will be quick and easy. The last two... not so much.
Breast Specialist:
She is the one that really dictates the course of treatment and gets all of the doctors lined up ready to go. I saw her a month or so ago. All went well and I won't be seeing her again until it's time to take my port out in November or December! While awake, I might add. From there I will follow-up with the Survivorship Clinic instead of the breast specialist. How amazing is that?! Survivorship.
Fertility Specialist:
Nothing too new here. Back in November fourteen eggs were harvested before starting chemo, which sends you into menopause after damaging your ovaries. Those eggs have recently been sent to a long term storage facility. Whenever I am ready to use them I just have to give them 30 days notice and they ship them right back. What service!
That all being said, it isn't impossible that menopause can be reversed. I know, wild right?! Supposedly if you are younger than 35 there is a chance that they may come back to life, usually after a year post-chemo, and you can conceive the natural way. Honestly, I will be happy to do whatever it takes to have kids, but wouldn't it be great to stick it to cancer once again? Chemo baby, POW! I guess you will have to stay tuned for the next several years on that one, ha!
Oncologist:
I am still doing Herceptin as a "maintenance chemo" for being HER2 positive. If I remember correctly, I have seven more of those. If you haven't heard me say before this is the Game Changer in terms of HER2+ cancer, which is the most rapid and out of control cells. It has also been a blessing that I had a Full Pathological Response to chemo, meaning that the tumor itself was gone and there was no presence of cancer in my lymph nodes. Combining those issues together really determines my cure rate, according to my oncologist. Because I had a FPR he said I have a 85-90% cure rate. If I didn't have a FPR with being HER+ that would have been 60%-70%. What a huge difference. Then again, I hate the statistics because I don't want to be one, but that gives you an idea of how important that response to chemo truly was.
I was really hoping that I would be able to tell you that I will not have to take Tamoxifen, but that is not the case. Tamoxifen is a drug they give breast cancer patients that are pre-menopausal age to block estrogen. If you've been around since the beginning of my diagnosis, this doesn't sound right since my tumor was estrogen negative... for the most part. It was actually 2% estrogen driven. If you are 2%-100% estrogen driven this drug can help you, but there's no proof that 0%-2% estrogen driven will benefit. Of course I just have to fall on that line. He is honestly not sure that it will do me any good, but wants me to give it a shot as long as I don't have any of the common side effects. If any show up, I will stop immediately.
My main issue with having to take this drug is that usually it is taken daily for 5-10 years. During that time you can't get pregnant. Which in the grand scheme of SAVING YOUR LIFE, shouldn't be a big deal... but a girl can dream, right? My doctor said I don't have to commit to the full 5 years so we will see how it goes. At this time I will commit to the next year, as long as there are no side effects. Like I said above, I will being doing maintenance chemo until November or December. Then you have to wait six months for that to get out of your system before trying to have a baby because it causes birth defects. Therefore it would be another year before I could even try to have kids anyway, if my relationship were at the right spot for it. But we are in no rush there.
I'm sure some people would say that all of this is TMI. But I share all of that with you so you can see the question of when you have kids after cancer is truly a crap shoot. I may be able to conceive naturally. I may carry my own kids after IVF. I may have to use a surrogate if I am unable to carry due to IVF problems or having to stay on Tamoxifen. Or I might just adopt. What can I say? I like keeping people on their toes. (Also, if you find yourself asking young couples when they are having kids, plllllease stop. The fertility struggle is REAL, folks. But that's a whole other soapbox I will save for another day.)
Plastic Surgeon:
This man is MAGIC! I honestly wish that I didn't have nipples and that I wasn't a teacher so I could share my engineered foobies with the world. Now before you go thinking I'm totally crazy, following the story of other women is how I truly wrapped my head around what the process of reconstruction was. Google is HORRIFIC, so instead I found real life women my age with real stories, like Meg. If only I were able to share my foobies with the (internet) world so I could show other women going through this what it is like when you are in the hands of an amazing plastic surgeon. But I can't, so I will find other ways to reach out to these women instead... I'm sure my dad is relieved to read that, haha!
Anywho, things are going great on the reconstruction front. I am happy with the size they are at so I just did my last fill yesterday. I will go in next Monday to double check that they are the way I want them and schedule my next pre-op for 2 months down the road. This will be a quick procedure to remove the expanders and replace them with implants. Man, am I ready to have these coconuts out! I don't find the expanders unbearable like some of my breasties have, but they are annoying. In the mean time I will be working on my scars using bioCorneum serum, which I was given yesterday.
I'm slowly, but surely, starting to see the light at the end of this first year tunnel. I know this won't ever be over, but was recently told by a 10 year survivor that eventually cancer will be in the back of your mind instead of at the front of it each and every moment of the day. I look forward to that day. But until then, I will keep fighting.
I hope that everything I shared made sense to those you that haven't been immersed in all of this before. If not, please feel free to ask me questions. I'm an open book as always!
- Audra