Back in the saddle

As you probably know Heather had to have her left implant surgically removed last Wednesday.  This unfortunately pushed back the chemo that was planned for last Friday.  

We weren't sure how Heather would be feeling after the surgery and we almost cancelled the shearing party we had planned for Saturday. Fortunately the good news was plentiful; she felt pretty darn good, only had one drain, and she started shedding on her own!  So just in the nick of time we had the shearing party on Saturday and it was a blast!

Heather started off by taking the first cut with scissors.  We then let each of our little ones take a whack and then several other kids at the party did the same. Next came the clippers.  We shaved one side of her head and she looked very, well, European punk maybe?   Next the other side came off so she was sporting a mowhawk.  It was awesome!  Then the rest was taken off and by Jove she looked absolutely beautiful.  I mean fantastically gorgeous!  (Still does)

The plastic surgeon who removed the implant and the oncologist came to an agreement of sorts and today we had a chemo appointment established.  Since Heather's blood work was stellar the oncologist proceeded with the chemo!  I know it sounds weird to be excited about it but we want the chemo to get in there and do what it is supposed to do as soon as possible and any delays are frustrating.

2 down and 6 to go.  Thanks for all of the love and support.  Really...it means an awful lot to us.   XXXXOOOO

Heather rockin a mowhawk on the way to a complete shave

Mountains and valleys to traverse

As many of you know Heather had a rather unexpected surgery today to remove the reconstruction expander and some dead tissue in her left breast.  This was due to continued swelling due to fluid buildup in the breast which compromised the blood flow to the tissue and the skin became paper thin and it had the potential to open which would have caused the removal of the expander anyway.

Therefore her right breast, the cancer side, still looks great.  The left side is now flat and maybe even a little indented.  Her rebuilding process on the left side will not occur for about 1 year as she needs to get through chemo, radiation, and the residual effects of radiation before they can rebuild.

Heather's sister Katie, the angel that she is, came in from Michigan this morning to join us for the surgery and though we would have preferred this not happen we are pleased that the surgery went very well.  It started at 1:00 and was finished by 1:16.  Katie and i met with the physician, Dr. Butterfield whom Heather and I absolutely adore, and then waited about an hour to see Heather in recovery.

Heather was alert, smiling, and felt great and not just because of the meds.  We were on the way out the door by 4!  Before we left Dianne Stapp stopped by to see us since she works as a nurse at The Christ Hospital.  It was so nice to see her.  She and I go waaaayyyy back when she and her husband, boyfriend at the time, Tod and I worked together at Coney Island.  Heather has been lucky enough to know her since Jackie's dancing days at McNick.

We are evaluating whether or not we will continue with Heather's shearing event on Saturday.  We will see how she feels through tomorrow and go from there.  Thanks to all of you for your love, prayers, and energy today and everyday.  It truly makes a difference in our lives.

As a wise woman (Laura Daniels Graves) said to me once, and I paraphrase "Setbacks allow for comebacks".  So true.  This will slow us down a bit since chemo has to be put off for a week or two but we shall move on and kick the crap out of this cancer.

Cosmetic Shift

"The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray."

It is inevitable, when it comes to cancer treatment that things will not go as planned. That somewhere along the line there will be a slight change or modification to the plan. Lets just say that sometimes the changes aren't so slight and you have to remind yourself that the reality is that these plans are fluid and sometimes there are major changes in direction but you are still moving forward. 

This leads me to my life over the past 2 1/2 weeks. The plan for the last week of August was: port placement on Wednesday and Chemo on Friday. But on Monday I noticed that my left breast was swollen so I called the surgeon and she fit me in. With a look of concern she drained about 120cc of fluid out of my breast. With a reminder to come back and see her if it started to swell again we were back on plan. I noticed a little swelling after my port placement on Wednesday but nothing I worried about too much. 

Friday was chemo day. Chemo day involves a lot of waiting. You start out getting a lab draw (through my fancy new port). Then you sit around and wait for the doctor to get the results so that she can make sure you are well enough to get chemo. This visit, since it was the first one, also included some extra education (which is always helpful). Then we head downstairs to wait for an empty chair in the infusion room. Once that's available you wait for the medicine to come and get checked and verified. Then they start the infusion. The infusion is pretty painless - just a little boring if you don't have someone as entertaining as Mark to keep you company. And then you are done.  

They give you a bunch of preventative medications that help curb side effects (like nausea etc.). Then they put you on an anti-nausea plus steroid combo for the next two days to keep you feeling good. (Mark and I like to refer to the steroid as Meth - it's somewhere in the name). Despite all this of course I came crashing down into nausea land. 

In the meantime, I noticed that I was swelling more and more in my left breast. Of course, it was a holiday weekend and by Tuesday I was feeling pretty rotten from the chemo so I forgot to call the plastic surgeon. By Wednesday I was a mess - nausea like crazy, sores on my tongue (turned out I had thrush), and the swelling in my left breast was getting uncomfortable - so I called and got appointments made with my surgeon and oncologist. My surgeon took one look at my breast and was very unhappy. They ended up draining about 200cc of fluid this time. She scheduled a follow up for today - she was very concerned with how my incision and skin looked. 

I've been slowly feeling better from the chemo and I've been making sure to do everything my doctors told me but today's appointment didn't go very well. My surgeon took one look at my breast today and sat down. She sat quietly for a long time - I could see all the wheels turning as she tried to come up with the new plan...  Then she gave me the bad news - I am losing my implant (or expander to be more accurate). 

The skin on my breast won't likely survive much more chemo if any. It is ready to rupture. So tomorrow they have to take it out and clean out the dead and dying tissue and then close it up. There will be nothing left. We will have to do a major rebuild process after I heal from radiation treatment. It will involve a lot more surgery and they will have to take donor skin/tissue from somewhere else on my body to build the breast.  It will be a lot more complicated. So that means another surgery now, postponement of chemo for a few weeks, and more surgeries later. 

To put it mildly, I am bummed. 

But I try to remember something I read recently describing the human spirit as water. It can be calm and peaceful but it can be fierce.  It can move around obstacles with hardly a notice or with a ferocity needed to move them out of the way. So I remind myself this is something I can and will manage. Just maybe not always gracefully. 

Love to you all,

Grace Faux Tata

I'll have the port please

Heather had her port placed today.  The port will allow easier access for blood draws and chemo delivery.  Instead of having an IV inserted for each treatment they just administer it through the port! Good thing too since they had to stick her twice to get an IV to work for the delivery of anesthesia for today's surgery.  It also involved propping the needle base up with a gauze pad so the needle would sit just right in her vein to allow the liquids to pass.  :/

The port is placed under the skin just below the clavicle in Heather's left shoulder.  The surgery went well though she is having significant pain emanating from her shoulder down into her arm.  Drugs are wonderful so for now she is sleeping it off.  Waking up is not going to be pleasant.

We had a wonderful meal thanks to one of our neighbors and that helped immensly as we arrived just in time to pick the kids up from school and got home about 6:15.  Having dinner ready to be passed over the back fence saved us from a cereal dinner!  Thanks Penelope!!!

The surgey took place at University Hospital and the same day surgery unit is right across from the surgical intensive care unit (SICU) where our daughter Jackie was working a 12 hour shift!  She was able to get away for a few minutes at lunchtime (her lunchtime being 2:45) and came over to the waiting room right when they called me back to see Heather.  We all hung out for a few minutes then I got a tour of the SICU (impressive to say the least) and then let Jackie get back to her crazy day which I am unable to begin to describe here.  It was wonderful to see her in action and well respected on such an important unit of the hospital. I am very proud of her.

Heather gets "a day off" tomorrow then starts her red devil chemo on Friday.  It's almost go time and we are ready to dive in thanks to all of the care, love, and support coming our way.  Thank you all from the bottom of Heather's port.  (Which is above the heart so that's supposed to be a good thing folks!)

Heather's fashion statement

Reality Check!

First I'd like to say that during this process I have always thought - "We'll, why not me?"  I feel like I have had a pretty good life up to this point. Not to say there has never been drama or chaos but really if we didn't have those things would we be normal? I have never felt like this cancer wasn't fair to me - not that I've been wretched and deserve it - but I won't claim to be a saint either. Just that I don't feel like there is anything so different or special about me that I should be exempt from some major life battle.

It probably helps that I come from a long family line of dealing with some very trying and difficult health issues if not out of the ordinary. I have a strong and beautiful warrior cousin who was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis at a very young age, I have an adorable niece with Neurofibromatosis (NF), I have an aunt with MS, and so on...  So who am I to ask " Why me?"

So that brings me to this week. A very sweet co-worker sent me a book written by a local woman who had breast cancer. It was a quick read and I found some humor and insight in the book but it also got me to start asking questions again. I have admittedly given up googling anything regarding my cancer since the end of June.

I decided to look up some information on the chemo treatment I will be starting this week. The first of my chemo drugs is what they call AC (because the actual names are impossible to say in healthcare we frequently use acronyms). I started by reading a site that was just a forum for women talking about their side effects,etc. Nothing too surprising popped up there.

Then I found a site called Health Central which had some more objective information in it and was actually discussing my full chemo regime which is AC and then Taxol (I won't get too scientific here but will put a little blurb at the end for those who are interested). But I will say that AC is frequently referred to as The Red Devil.

The site is set up as a Q&A type forum and I was reading through finding all kinds of useful information and then I came across a paragraph that knocked the wind out of me.
It talked about how a patient may be put on an accelerated schedule which is referred to as "dose dense" chemo. This is considered a more aggressive way to deliver chemo "when aggressive measures are necessary."

With that last part of the sentence I started to lose my supercharged optimism. I sat on the couch saying over and over that it was just because I'm so young not because its that bad. And then I started to cry. Luckily my brave knight was nearby and could come and hold me and remind me that we can do this, that I can fight this good fight.

Reality is that it isn't great, but it is far from a losing battle. But I have come to realize that it is going to be a lot harder then I have been admitting to myself so far. That I am going to need to rely on my troops even more then ever to help me stay focused and positive. That because it is "dose dense" that I'm probably not going to recover as quickly between treatments as I want to think.

I am worried for my family and how hard this will be on them. I hope that for my kids this will become a blurry memory someday. But the anxiety and exhaustion that is my husband's plight is hard - it's just hard. He is being very strong but its hard for him to hide his true feelings from the one who reads him best. So I worry.

So this is my reality check. And this is my plea to my troops and my guardian angels and my bad ass cancer fighting team. Please forgive me for my excessive need. Please know that I see you and hear you and feel you when you do me a favor, send me a note, or even pray or send your positivity my way. I appreciate every gesture no matter the size and I thank you. There will be many more requests to come - especially around entertaining the kids. So thank you all from the very depths of my heart and soul. 

For those that are I interested in the medical details...
AC - is actually two drugs: doxorubicin (Adriamycin), and cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan). I will receive The Red Devil every 14 days for 4 cycles. It is normally given every 21 days.  Once that is complete I will be given Paclitaxil (Taxol). This is given to woman who are node positive or have had a recurrence. It follows the same schedule as AC. Radiation details to follow later.
This is a pretty heavy duty cocktail normally so I will be loosing my hair within the first month. So I've tasked Mark with coming up with my cool new bad ass bald chick name. Feel free to offer suggestions he is great with brainstorming.

Tata faux now,
Love you all💕💕
Heather

A little bit of great news!

I wanted to put a note out there for anyone who has been following my mom's story.  The second spot they found was negative - so she only has the one little spot of cancer.

For those of you who didn't know - they found a spot of cancer in my mother's breast around mid-July. After doing an MRI they found several more spots of concern. There has been a lot of craziness back and forth with biopsies and failed biopsies they narrowed it down to just one new spot of concern. This spot was the difference between a lumpectomy and a mastectomy. They were finally able to get a good biopsy of the spot on Aug 13th. It took until today to get the results.

All I can say is that I am quite relieved that it is just the one little spot. I don't know what the full final treatment recommendations (outside of the lumpectomy) will be but they will be so much less and that is a wonderful thing!

As Mark would say - always keeping you abreast if the situation.
Love to all,
2 Drainz