Friday, October 4, 2013

And so it begins

On Wednesday I began my first round of chemo. It honestly wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The nurse gave me steroid and anti-nausea meds before I got the nasty stuff and that helped tremendously. She did warn that when those two things wore off I would not be feeling so hot and she was 100% correct. I'm having to go to the cancer center every day to get a shot to keep my white blood cell count up and I seem to get sick everytime I finish with that. I was told that I would most definitely lose all of my hair with the cocktail that I am on so I went yesterday and got all of my hair cut off. It looks awful and quite frankly I felt stupid paying to get a haircut when I know I will probably only have the hair another week or two. I just felt it would be easier if I lost short strands rather than long ones. 
The girls seem to be taking everything okay. Yesterday I started getting sick right around the time they came home from school and I was worried about their reaction. They were super sweet though and brought me blankets (I was freezing!) and asked me if I needed anything. I honestly think the thing that bugs me the most about all this mess is how it is going to affect them. So far they seem to be taking everything in stride, but I worry about how things will go as we progress. Kids are pretty darn resilient though and mine are awesome so I'm sure they'll be just fine.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Life Today

It's been quite some time since I've posted on my old blog.  Like most of you I've been busy with family, work, and all the billion activities that go along with life. Until now. You see things kind of came to a screeching halt around here on September the 9th for me. That was the day I heard the dreaded words "It's cancer." Yep, that's right I am now that one woman out of every eight that has breast cancer. 
Now that I have finally (somewhat) wrapped my brain around it I thought I would post about what is going on. I'm posting not only for myself, but in case what I am about to go through might be able to help someone else in a similar situation. So....let's begin at the beginning shall we?
I'm not one of those women that found a lump during a routine breast exam. Heck, I rarely ever did them. I would occasionally check when I was in the shower, but quite frankly I didn't think about it that often. I went in to my doctor for a check up and while there she did an exam. She told me everything looked good, but I was due for my mammogram so I made an appointment to go the next week. I was actually quite annoyed about having to make the appointment. My kids just started back to school and since I sub at their school and volunteer there I knew I didn't have time to stop for an appointment. I shudder to think of how close I came to cancelling it. 
I went in for the mammogram and kind of felt something might not be right because the technician kept checking my right breast. I wasn't overly concerned because at my last mammogram (two years prior) my right side showed something. However two years ago when I went back for a second screening they quickly told me everything was okay. Not this time unfortunately. I was told to come back in a few days for a biopsy. I kept calm while in the doctors office, but walking to the parking lot the tears came. All I could think about was having cancer and not getting to watch my babies grow up. Anyone that has ever meet me will tell you that those three little girls of mine are my everything. The thought of missing one minute of their life had me scared, sad and angry. The biopsy wasn't fun, but it wasn't horrible either. I was still in denial because I couldn't feel anything, the mammogram tech. couldn't feel anything and the doctor even had a hard time feeling anything. Sadly, the biopsy didn't have a hard time finding anything. It found a tumor approximately two centimeters. 
When I received the diagnosis I was oddly enough calmer than I had been during my waiting period. I now knew what was going on and could do something about it. As of now my doctors want me to have chemo starting tomorrow. When I am done with that I will have a lumpectomy, then a month later I will start six weeks of radiation. To be honest I waver from day to day with my emotions on this whole, nasty mess. I'm lucky in that my cancer was caught early, however I'm what's known as triple negative which means that I have a more aggressive cancer with a lower survival rate. Sucks doesn't it? But you know what? That's life and sometimes in life we just have to suck it up and deal with it. 
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