So today is the day I posted my blog on Facebook, what I had thus far. Ironically enough I ended up in the hospital the same day, so all the messages from people supporting me could not have come at a better time. So the entire weekend I felt hot, then cold and so so tired. I was taking 3 hour naps and still felt so tired. Well everyone knows that doctors are the worst patients, this is for several reason, but generally we are super bad and doctoring ourselves. It should have occurred to me that I was sick and having chills, but it didn't until I started to tell Matt my symptoms out loud on a sunday evening while he was putting our baby to bed and then it dawned on me...duh! So I took my temperature and sure enough I had a temp of 100.9. Off to the hospital we had to go, but we had to find someone to watch baby Finn, I wasn't going to take a 4 month old to the ER with me when it was his bedtime. So we made what felt like a thousand calls. No one was home, or they were unavailable. Luckily we have one family member in Gig Harbor and they were available, thank goodness!
I ended up having cellulitis of my left breast, so if you are counting, this is the second time my left boob has tried to kill me. I met sepsis criteria so of course I was admitted and had to stay in the hospital for 2 days...torture! I felt like they were trying to kill me, on purpose! I exaggerate but it was not the best experience. Now I am on IV antibiotics for the time being and will likely be on antibiotics for quite a while because underneath my left boob skin infection is a foreign body, the tissue expander! There were talks about having to take it out if the infection didn't get better with antibiotics, but hopefully that doesn't have to happen. I already had to postpone chemo for one week, if I have to have surgery, then we would have to postpone it further and that is not good. I want to get these chemo cycles over with! To be continued I guess...
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Oh the neutropenia! (4/17/2014)
Well not only did I start chemo in April, but that same week I went back to work after 4 months! I think I had the most tumultuous maternity leave ever! I couldn't stand being home any longer. Now of course I am setting myself up for sounding like the worst mom ever, but I was ready to go back to work. I just don't have it in me to be a stay at home mom, what's the point of becoming a doctor if you are going to be a stay at home mom after just a few years, mommy has loans to pay off! Ironically enough, I would probably make more money if I stayed home on disability, but I really wanted to get back to my patients and having a reason to get dressed and go out of the house everyday.
So I went back to work and started chemo the same week. On the day of chemo, I had a little sore throat and we convinced ourselves that it was allergies cause I felt fine. Well...we were wrong, dead wrong. I had the worst cold I have had in years, and of course I became horrifically neutropenic (low white blood cell counts) which meant I had no immune system to fight anything. So my oncologist sent me home from work...I had barely started!
Needless to say, it took forever to get over this cold and I coughed for over a month later. It is difficult to tell what symptoms I had from the chemo because I was so sick with a cold, but the nausea was minimal and I didn't throw up so I considered that a success. The side effect that is probably the most bothersome for me is the fatigue and the neutropenia (because I am on house arrest for 3 days while my blood counts are low).
Oh yeah, I also started losing my hair about 2 weeks after my first chemo. First, I tried a short faux hawk hairstyle, but it was coming out fast and furious so Matt shaved my head. Lucky for me, Natalie Portman from V for Vendetta is my husband's celebrity crush, so he likes bald chicks! Of course, I had my wigs ready to go and they are fabulous! I forgot to mention that I took a one day hiatus with Matt to Los Angeles to buy wigs during this journey, where else do you get the best wigs than in hollywood! Losing my hair has not been the worst part of chemo so far, it really hasn't bothered me as much as I thought it would, maybe its because my wigs look better than my real hair did!
So I went back to work and started chemo the same week. On the day of chemo, I had a little sore throat and we convinced ourselves that it was allergies cause I felt fine. Well...we were wrong, dead wrong. I had the worst cold I have had in years, and of course I became horrifically neutropenic (low white blood cell counts) which meant I had no immune system to fight anything. So my oncologist sent me home from work...I had barely started!
Needless to say, it took forever to get over this cold and I coughed for over a month later. It is difficult to tell what symptoms I had from the chemo because I was so sick with a cold, but the nausea was minimal and I didn't throw up so I considered that a success. The side effect that is probably the most bothersome for me is the fatigue and the neutropenia (because I am on house arrest for 3 days while my blood counts are low).
Oh yeah, I also started losing my hair about 2 weeks after my first chemo. First, I tried a short faux hawk hairstyle, but it was coming out fast and furious so Matt shaved my head. Lucky for me, Natalie Portman from V for Vendetta is my husband's celebrity crush, so he likes bald chicks! Of course, I had my wigs ready to go and they are fabulous! I forgot to mention that I took a one day hiatus with Matt to Los Angeles to buy wigs during this journey, where else do you get the best wigs than in hollywood! Losing my hair has not been the worst part of chemo so far, it really hasn't bothered me as much as I thought it would, maybe its because my wigs look better than my real hair did!
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Starting Chemotherapy, The Red Sunshine (4/10/2014)
Three days after I froze my eggs and 6 days after I had my port placed, I was in getting my first chemo infusion. I was super nervous, once you start it you can't go back! Crazy thoughts: What if they were wrong again and I really didn't need chemo? What if I was allergic? What if I get really sick? I was scared to say the least. Matt was with me during my chemo and that was super comforting. Of course I was the youngest person there, although there were a group of younger women and you could tell they were the breast cancer group. Usually I'm pretty friendly and love to talk to people, but that day I didn't want anyone to know me, recognize me or talk to me about my cancer, I don't think I was ready yet. My oncologist and oncology PA/friend came to visit me and that made me feel super comforted.
The Red Sunshine refers to the medication adriamycin. It's red, it makes you pee red and its the most toxic of all the chemotherapy agents that I will be taking. I have 4 cycles of adriamycin with cytoxan and then I have 12 weeks of taxol after that. This is a pretty standard regimen. At first they were telling me I only had to have 2 of the 3 chemos, then they thought to be safe I should do all 3, and then they called be back and said that there was a new study (from Dec 2013) that showed that a 4th chemo agent called carboplatin (not new, but not usually used in breast cancer) used in patients with triple negative breast cancer (like me) had a much greater percentage of complete pathologic response. That means that peoples tumors disappeared! Now we won't know what it will do for my tumor because my tumor is out, but this is all for the just in case it spread microscopically to another place in my body so we can kill it so it doesn't come back.
This is always in my thoughts, the fear of recurrence. Everyone tells me I need to think positively, but it's hard to do that when you know what this demon cancer is capable of. I have the most aggressive type that has a 30% recurrence rate without chemo and with chemo it only brings that down to 20%. That is a huge percentage. And if it does come back it will be stage 4. So this fear does consume me very often throughout the day, but every night before I go to bed, I tell myself its not coming back and I will beat it, I hope the cancer believes me and doesn't smell my fear!
The Red Sunshine refers to the medication adriamycin. It's red, it makes you pee red and its the most toxic of all the chemotherapy agents that I will be taking. I have 4 cycles of adriamycin with cytoxan and then I have 12 weeks of taxol after that. This is a pretty standard regimen. At first they were telling me I only had to have 2 of the 3 chemos, then they thought to be safe I should do all 3, and then they called be back and said that there was a new study (from Dec 2013) that showed that a 4th chemo agent called carboplatin (not new, but not usually used in breast cancer) used in patients with triple negative breast cancer (like me) had a much greater percentage of complete pathologic response. That means that peoples tumors disappeared! Now we won't know what it will do for my tumor because my tumor is out, but this is all for the just in case it spread microscopically to another place in my body so we can kill it so it doesn't come back.
This is always in my thoughts, the fear of recurrence. Everyone tells me I need to think positively, but it's hard to do that when you know what this demon cancer is capable of. I have the most aggressive type that has a 30% recurrence rate without chemo and with chemo it only brings that down to 20%. That is a huge percentage. And if it does come back it will be stage 4. So this fear does consume me very often throughout the day, but every night before I go to bed, I tell myself its not coming back and I will beat it, I hope the cancer believes me and doesn't smell my fear!
Freezing my eggs! (4/7/2014)
So, according to my oncologist, I had just enough time to freeze my eggs if I wanted to, I basically had a little less than 3 weeks to do it, so where was the time to decide if I even wanted to? By the way, just so your know, when you freeze your eggs or do in vitro fertilization, its generally an out of pocket expense and its EXPENSIVE! So when you are freezing your eggs because you are going to have chemo, the insurance companies for sure don't cover it. Anyway, I made the fastest appointment I could with the fertility specialist and when in to discuss my options. Before we left that appointment, we had already started the process, so there was no time to think about it, there was only time to just do it and think later! Oh and the fertility specialist gave me the caveat that we might do all this and it might not work at all if my body is too stressed. Well let's see, I just had a baby, was just diagnosed with breast cancer and had just had surgery, yes I think my body was under a little stress! Oh and if it doesn't work, you are just out of luck, you don't get your money back!
I then started the tedious process of giving myself 3 shots a day for about 2 weeks, going in to check how big my eggs/follicles were getting, and they were huge! And at the end of this minor torture, a procedure where they harvest your eggs. Well I was super proud of myself (as if I had any control) but they harvested 23 eggs and 15 were viable to be frozen...that's a lot! My reproductive system seemed to be working just fine, minor victories!
After all of this, my fertility specialist decided to keep me on lupron to put me into menopause with the hope that if my ovaries are quiet during the chemotherapy, maybe the chemo won't affect them as much, so now I am only on one shot a day during my 5 months of chemo.
And that my friends is how you freeze your eggs! Now do Matt and I even know if we want more kids, nope not sure yet, but its always better to be safe then sorry!
I then started the tedious process of giving myself 3 shots a day for about 2 weeks, going in to check how big my eggs/follicles were getting, and they were huge! And at the end of this minor torture, a procedure where they harvest your eggs. Well I was super proud of myself (as if I had any control) but they harvested 23 eggs and 15 were viable to be frozen...that's a lot! My reproductive system seemed to be working just fine, minor victories!
After all of this, my fertility specialist decided to keep me on lupron to put me into menopause with the hope that if my ovaries are quiet during the chemotherapy, maybe the chemo won't affect them as much, so now I am only on one shot a day during my 5 months of chemo.
And that my friends is how you freeze your eggs! Now do Matt and I even know if we want more kids, nope not sure yet, but its always better to be safe then sorry!
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