Half Way

I feel like I should be more excited about the prospect of being half way through chemo, but 9 more weeks to go still sounds like a really long time! And let's not forget I will still continue getting the Herceptin infusions every three weeks, but at least they only take 30 minutes (as opposed to 4-5 hours), and my oncologist assures me that there are little to no side effects to the Herceptin alone. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I had my labs and oncologist visit this morning and despite being a little anemic my counts are looking good for round four. I was happy to see my doctor today because I had lots of questions. I have a weird lump in my right arm (mastectomy side) and two hard lumps on my sternum that are new. She isn't concerned about the arm one, but wants to "monitor" the ones on my chest, mostly because of their location. I wonder if I'm forever going to contribute every little malady to cancer. Going for my check-in is like a therapy session - I pour out all my concerns and she reassures me that I have a highly treatable form of cancer and all is going as planned. She kept making me repeat, "I have a greater than 90% chance of being cured, " throughout my visit. It was like a Matt Damon/Robin Williams Good Will Hunting moment: "It's not your fault. It's not your fault"...

In other news, you may have noticed from my photos that I still have eyelashes and eyebrows. They are definitely thinner, but I have them nonetheless. I asked about that today and she said they'll probably stick around if they haven't fallen out by now, but no promises. She also told me to expect my hair to start growing back 2 months post-chemo, which was longer than I anticipated. I guess I was thinking it would start growing back the day after chemo was done. Looks like I will be stuck with this wig for quite some time. Sigh.

I also learned today that there is no real test for determining whether the chemo actually worked, other than finding cancer (or not) somewhere else. I'll continue to get mammograms and MRI's, but I thought there would be some sort of blood test or something at the end that would determine - ALL CLEAR! - and reassure me that all was well on the vascular front. Makes me feel like a bit of a sitting duck. I want a battle plan; a concrete change I can make to rid myself of the big C. I asked her what I could/should be doing to beat this and she said, "You're doing it. Stay in shape - you're fit. Maintain a healthy body weight - you're thin. And limit your soy." Done, done and done.  I guess I have to hope that these drugs do their thing!

My chemo angel Stacey sent me a card recently, which made me chuckle because like me, she thinks that telling someone in crisis that everything happens for a reason is SO not helpful.

Inside she wrote, "Sometimes things just happen...even to amazing women like us." Couldn't have said it better myself.  (o: