Dealing with the doctor’s appointments and procedures and all of this is a full-time job right now. And I haven’t even begun treatment yet. It goes like this: “We need you to schedule time for a procedure where we’ll place a reflector on your lymph node to mark it. If the chemo works really well, the marker that was already left during your biopsy will be too hard to find during surgery. So you’ll need to get this done before you start chemo in less than two weeks.” And that’s just one of four things like that this coming week.
Ah, yes - about that chemo. So, the treatment plan has changed. I’m now going to be doing chemo before surgery, rather than after. This has been a big question and it was even the source of much debate amongst the doctors when my case was presented at the tumor board.
Side note - you never want to be interesting enough to the doctors to be presented at their conference. Boring. My long-term goal is to go back to being SUPER boring to all of my doctors. But for now, I’m grateful for the additional set of eyes on my case from a whole room full of wicked smart doctors who specialize in all aspects of this cancer and treatment.
Anyway, back to the treatment plan. The chemo regimen is going to be the same whether it’s before of after surgery. But doing it before gives me a small chance of the chemo reducing the cancer enough that I would have to have less surgery and/or less radiation. It’s hard to estimate the chances, but as my oncology surgeon said, “even 15% is better than 0%.”
In a perfect world (let’s say - the success we’re all going to visualize) the chemo would:
Reduce the size of the tumor in my right breast so much that I need less or no radiation there, which means fewer potential complications for reconstruction; AND
Shrink the cancer in my lymph nodes so the surgeon will only have to remove the one lymph node that we know is involved and we can avoid an axillary lymph node dissection (where she’ll have to remove all of the lymph nodes on that side).
While all of this makes all the sense in the world, it means that the part I’m dreading the most, the part that I’ve been grateful I had some time to get used to - the chemo - has now been moved up in the timeline significantly. In fact, my first chemo treatment begins on February 25.
Because I’m so young, the chemo regimen is “aggressive” according to the oncologist. I came as close as I’ve ever come to a panic attack when she started rolling forward, putting treatments on the calendar. I had to take the rest of the day before confirming with the oncologists’ office that this was what we were going to do. I just needed a little breathing room.
But even with all of that, there is one silver lining to this abrupt change in plans. And it’s perfect timing now that I’ve discovered this new ability I have to be really good at visualizing, especially when it’s really needed. We now have a very specific thing to visualize throughout my chemotherapy.
I am still completely overwhelmed by the absolute army of people who are thinking about our family and praying for me through all of this. I am so, so grateful for it all. And I believe in the power of this collective movement.
So, with that, here’s my request for all of you:
Let’s visualize the chemo doing exactly what it’s supposed to do - shrinking the cancer so much, that I will need a less significant surgery AND less radiation overall.
As always, thank you. We can do hard things.