Can I just register my protest that I do not want to do any of this? IDONWAANA!!!I Ok I am done.

Before the big pow-wow with Dr. Gohlesorkhi on October 4, I made a few important decisions.  First and foremost – I am going to fight this bullshit thing with all of the grace and courage I can muster no matter what she might say in our meeting.  Second, despite what I just said about grace and courage, I will NOT go gently into that good night.  Third, for any big appointments, I will take a friend with me to have a second pair of ears and a second opinion on my behalf.  Finally, I am going to accept the help of my friends on everything with great joy and set aside my independent-to-my-own-detriment-streak for the purpose of this fight. 

I am so grateful that Tracy Mosebey was able to go to this first big appointment with me.  In fact, I would not have gotten through it without her – in part because when I didn’t specifically ask for it but I really needed to hear “I will take your cats if something happens to you” that is what she said (hope Dave is ok with that).  Thank you for the handholding, the support and the diet coke as soon as we were done too!

There is nothing in the world that can prepare you to hear the words “your cancer is Stage 3b.” It is only by the grace of God that I kept from throwing up right then. 

Now that I am learning more about this disease and what is going on with me individually, the stage number does not scare me quite as badly, though it still sucks.  My actual type of tumor is a rare form of breast cancer called mucinous carcinoma, which if you look up seems like that might not be a bad cancer to have and in some ways it isn’t.  However, mine tumor is particularly invasive because it came up fast, particularly large (4 centimeters), is unusually painful, and occurred in me at a much younger age than woman usually get it (late 60’s or older and after menopause).  All of these things combined put it in a higher risk category.  Then they do the pathology of the tumor itself to find out what the receptors are – again, my tumor falls in to a specific category that puts it at a higher risk – it is estrogen negative, progesterone negative but HER2 positive.  The HER2 positive means it tries to spread faster, however, there is now a specific chemo drug that targets HER2 positive tumors called Herceptin and it is getting great results, so that will factor into my treatment plan (discussed more later.) 

Anyway, because of all of these factors – my cancer is Stage 3b which means we have to be pretty aggressive in our fight against it.  Dr. Golesorkhi recommends chemotherapy, and then a mastectomy and reconstruction followed up by radiation.  Her office will head up my team of doctors, including my primary care physician, an oncologist, herself as my lead surgeon, a reconstructive surgeon and a radiologist.  They will head up coordinating all of my care and she gave me a laundry list of appointments I would have to have.  I like how organized and details Dr. Golesorkhi and her office are – and that at the end of telling me all this stuff, she was kind enough to give me a hug and tell me that we are all over this.

Holy Crap! All I have done since then is go to the doctor!  Seriously some days 3 in a day.  Half of Northern Virginia’s medical community has looked at my breasts at this point.  Sheesh!

The next critical appointment was to the oncologist, Dr. Anne Favret of Virginia Cancer Specialists.  Thanks to Laurie McKay for going to that appointment with me, keeping copious notes and holding my hand through the worst parts of “what chemo does to you.”   Dr. Favret explained that the new wisdom is to do chemo first to kill the tumor and then surgery to get it out of you followed by radiation.  She went over the receptors in the typing of tumors and is encouraged that she can use Herceptin in my chemotherapy mix to get specifically at my tumor.  The other two drugs she will use are more standard for all types of cancer – Taxotare and Carbo Platinum.  Thos are the two that make you sick during chemo and will be included in the first part of the treatment but Herceptin will continue for a full year. When I am just on Herceptin, I will start feeling better.  Anyway, Herceptin is thought of as the “hot new drug” for breast cancer because there didn’t used to be a drug specifically for HER2 positive tumors. 

I will have six treatments, three weeks apart and we set the first one for Friday, October 15.  The day after each treatment, I will have a shot of a drug called Neulasta that helps white blood cell development and keeps your immune system doing better during chemo.  While it sounds like the right plan, it does kind of freak me out that the cancer will stay in me for four months while we go down this path, but she did say they will monitor the tumor and we should see it shrink significantly – in fact I will probably be able to feel it myself.

A bazillion appointments that I won’t bore you with basically checked out my whole system to get a baseline on my health and get more info on what we are dealing with, but there are two key ones that are most important.  The first is the genetic test to see if I have the cancer gene.  I learned you can actually have the cancer gene and never get cancer, but if you do have it and then you get cancer, your odds of getting more cancer go up astronomically.  Knowing if you have the gene helps in deciding if you really must have a double mastectomy and helps you know if you are at risk for other women’s cancers.  Thankfully I do NOT have the cancer gene.  (and see you thought this whole post was going to suck….)

The other really key test was a scan called a BSGI – kind of an MRI specifically for breasts where they put radioactive dye in your system.  The dye basically rushes to your cancerous tumors to light them up for the scanner to see.   Great news on this as well – there is only the one tumor in the right breast and nothing in the left.  (see not everything sucks!)

The other test that was just cool because technology is cool was the one they did on my heart called a MUGA scan.  Again radioactive material is used to highlight part of your system so they can take pictures of it – in this case the blood flowing in and out of my heart.  That was cool enough but even better – I hit the point of radioactivity from all the tests I had over that time that I had to carry a card with me in case I set off a radiation monitor in a government building.  How freaking cool is that!?! (yeah seriously I can find a bright spot in just about anything at this point)

So that gets us to the point of real action – but I will save that for the next post.