Yes again - What Can We Do About It?

     "When I met with the oncologist – after we found out the little bumps on my mastectomy were cancerous – I could tell she was disappointed that it was back. She really likes me and I really like her and I was just – that was – oh it was a tough meeting. But she said, “It’s stage 4, it’s metastasized it’s spread to some areas, so we’ll have to control it, and she said, I don’t want to start chemo quite yet – my feeling was lets start chemo right away, we’ve got to hit this with everything you’ve got because I have kids to raise. She said, “I think you can afford to be a little bit patient right here. I’m going to start you off on Oxitrin and take you off Remadix because obviously stopped controlling it. So I’m going to put you on Oxitrin for awhile.” 

     "And so she  had my blood drawn – and she started tracking  – with this blood draw she started tracking a number which is from zero to 315 which is a number that is a tumor marker, its just one way of tracking certain kinds of cancer. They didn’t do it the first time but we’re doing it this time now. With my first blood draw my tumor was at 289 I guess that number is suppose to be under 39 to make it controllable or where you want it to be.  But mine was at 289 that was obviously high and it was an area of very great concern but we are going to try Oxitrin which is just a pill. 

     "I stopped the Remadix, I stopped the Rolladex shots and we started on the Oxi-marker that was actually in May 21^st.  She said each month I want you to go in and get your blood drawn and so I tried to do it around the 21^stjust depending if I was in town or not. The next time I had it drawn was in June and it was at 223 and it had gone down like 66 points – I was thrilled, I was just ahhh through the roof –relief -  there was a lot of crying there was a lot of “Thank you Heavenly Father!” The next month it was down to 130 it had gone down 90 points and the next month 128 and then down to 98 and then it bumped up a little bit to 105 and then it was 119 in November, it was at that point in October I started noticing that my left breast was acting just like my right one had when I was first diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. 

     "It was swollen, it was red, it was tender to the touch and the skin of it was a little bit dimpled like the skin of an orange. And so I sent a text message or an email message to the oncologist, and she said, “we need to see you.” So we went on in and she said, “Yup, its exactly acting like the other one.” “So what do we do?” She said, ”Umm, I’m not sure. I’m going to have to think about this one I’m going to think about how we are going to handle this. You’ll have to give me time to think about it.” I said, “Ok, I’m fine with doing a mastectomy – I just - whatever we need to do.” She talked about a couple of different options and things. 

     “Lets start by getting a meeting with the surgeon for them to look at it and see what they think. I know Kate Manning in the Surgeon department and I’d like you to meet with her. I set up a meeting with her. When Kate Manning walked into the room she looked at me and let loose with a really bad word. At the time it was a crazy thing and I was shocked by it – I can’t believe you just said that word to me – it kind of made me – it shocked me out of my – it kind of made me laugh “Oh OK!” very startled but it kind of broke the ice there and we were able to talk about it and she looked at it and she said, “I can’t believe this happened to you, man this sucks!”  “Yeah, it does, but in the meantime what can we do? I’m just on a fact finding mission to find out what our options are and if there is something we can do.” And she said, “Let’s start by doing a biopsy.” And I said, “That’s great.” 

      "And she came back in and she said, “I’ve called the oncologist and I’ve talked to Dr. Lu and I think we need to start you on chemo and get you ready for surgery.”  I said, “Great, that’s all I’m looking for are options.” I don’t want people to say there’s nothing else we can do or lets just see what happens next. No, I want to be doing something and I’m up for whatever we need to do. Yes I’ve been through all of it before but I can go through it again because that’s what needs to happen. So we went ahead and got me registered to start chemotherapy again.

        "In meeting with the oncologist she said, “You know we’ve got this – 

[Trastuzumab, Tamoxifen    Aromatase inhibitors Arimidex, Femara, Aromasin]

 types of medication starting with those letters – we can’t do the A anymore, the reason why is that you’ve had your lifetime fill of that one anymore and it could cause heart damage and we don’t want that to happen. She says, you’ve done Taxatfrin and Taxtill and we’ve done one of them before and she was going to do the other one and then she was going to keep the [Tee and Cee.]  So we did [T & C]. 

     "We started that in November and finished up in February and I tolerated it pretty well. One thing that was really, really nice was that I did not have the problem with my taste buds that I did last time that was so horrible. I did lose my hair so I still have Harry the wig. We just went through it. It was every three weeks there was one time Kristy was in town it was Spring Break so she went with me. No it was during Christmas time she was here and so she came with me. It was at this time that Amy returned from her mission and that was so great to see her. It was great to have her again. Went through and finished up the chemotherapy."