hard decisions....

Well, now that I have finally updated what has gone on in 2006, I will fill folks in on what has happened the first 5 months or so of this year.

After asking around a lot, I finally found a new surgeon and a plastic surgeon for reconstruction. All scans and mammograms were clean in January and February, so I felt pretty confident. It was a hard decision knowing that things looked good to go ahead with the double mastectomy, but the emotional roller coaster of the past year and a half had been too much to have to keep doing every 6 months, so the surgery was planned for April 3rd.

I had the surgery, and though I kept waiting for the big emotional meltdown, it never happened. It has been strange to get used to such a major part of your body missing, but it has felt very natural in a weird way. It is not exactly the most beautiful think right now as the surgeon left extra skin to have more to work with when I start the reconstruction. That is comforting, as I know it won't look like it does for the rest of my life....there is hope there. The best thing about it....NO BRAS....what freedom....HEHEHE

About a week after my surgery, I got a call from my surgeon. It is standard of care for them to send all tissue to pathology from surgery, and he was calling to give me the results of that report. I was, of course, expecting it to be nothing, all normal tissue. BUT, as with everything about my case over the last 2 years, nothing is normal. I had 2mm of what they call DCIS, kind of a group of cancer cells confined to a specific area, coming back on the left side. I couldn't believe it. After 6 months of chemo, and a year of herceptin, it was coming back in less than 6 months of finishing all that. By God's grace, it was confined to that specific area and had not infiltrated any surrounding tissue so it has not spread. All nodes they checked were also negative. With the surgery, the cancer was gone with no chance of it coming back now since all the breast tissue was gong. I was shocked, and yet relieved all at the same time.

You see, I looked at this as confirmation that I made the right decision. I knew it was what I needed to do, yet at times wondered if it was really necessary. I had prayed about the decision and God had given me peace about it, but I still wondered if it was what I was supposed to do, if it is what I had to do. Well, with the test results, all doubt I had about having the surgery disappeared. I was amazed by God's timing in all this....if I had done the surgery in January as planned, who knows if they would have been able to see any evidence of the cancer. I was amazed, and incredibly thankful.

During the time I was off work recovering from the mastectomy, I finally had made the decision to go and talk to a gynecologist/oncologist about my ovaries. The genetic mutation I have also puts me at higher risk for ovarian cancer. Every physician that I had seen for the last 6-8 months had been asking me what I planned to do with my ovaries. I had more or less refused to think about it for the last 2 years, the acutal cancer was enough to deal with, I didn't want to think about the maybes....the possibilities. But I couldn't put it off anymore. Especially in light of the results from the mastectomy. This was a persistent disease, and even though I know it is a completely different kind of cancer, I don't feel like I want to take the risk.

When I saw the gyn/onc doctor, he confirmed, yes, I needed to do this. He said they could scan me every 3-6 months and it could still be missed. Ovarian cancer is nothing to mess around with. We don't have very good tests to detect it, and that is why it is so horrible, we generally don't catch it as early.

So, now the decision has been made. The surgery is scheduled for June 15, 2007. Just 2 days after my 38th birthday I will have a complete hysterectomy. This has been a lot harder than the mastectomy, and in some ways harder than all I have been through in the last 2 years. This just seems more permanent. No children of my own, ever. Menopause with a pretty high potential for hot flashes....and in AZ in the summer, I don't see that being very fun. Overall, the whole thing pretty much stinks....but it could also save my life.....a preventative hysterectomy could save my life. My ability to give life will be gone, but I could be saving my own. I don't know, its just really hard.

Anyway, as I said, the decision has been made. The surgery is scheduled. And other than a few bumps along the way, I am doing okay with the decision. God has been working with me on some things, calming a lot of fears that I have, and giving me a sense of peace about it.

So that is what is coming up in the next 2 weeks. After the hysterectomy, they will let me start the process of the reconstruction, so there will be more surgery after that as well. I just figure the sooner I get everything started, the sooner I will be done. Maybe all of it will be done by march of next year....which still seems pretty far away, but at least there is an end in sight.

Well, now that I have updated the details of life in general, hopefully next time I can talk about some of the things God has been showing me through this experience of life.....

till then.

in HIM
anne

wow, it has REALLY been a while.

I knew it had been a while since I had written in this, but when I saw it has been more a year...well time flies I guess. I tried to get in a couple of months ago, but I couldn't remember my password. Thank goodness Google changed their format or whatever. hehe.

So, I guess to update quickly, I will try and give the highlights of 2006.

I finished chemo (at least the really hard stuff) in February.

I returned to work in March.

Soon after I returned to work, my second niece was born...Bryar Jenna. To celebrate, I made my first trip post chemo to Virginia to see my brother and his family. I was a little nervous that Sage, the 2 year old, would be scared of me...I didn't exactly look like myself. I had no hair, or at most a little fuzz, and my face was really puffy from tons of steroids. But she was fine. She rubbed my "hair", called me "puppy head" and moved on. Kids are great.

June meant another birthday and another mammogram. Not sure how they ended up in the months of my birthday and Christmas, but they aren't the best presents one could have. The initial news was a bit stressful. They saw what they questioned as an enlarged lymph node. Turned out to be two of them hanging out together having a party and when they got mashed, it looked like one big one. SO, they gave me the green light for another 6 months.

The hardest thing over the course of 2006 occurred labor day weekend. My dog Zac had started having problems getting around at the beginning of the summer. I even took him to doggie physical therapy for about 3 months (who knew they had such a thing). Anyway, he continued to get worse. I made the incredibly hard decision to let him go on Sept. 2. It was the Saturday of labor day weekend, 13 years exactly from when I had brought him home from the pound in VA. I cried more over that decision than I did over my own cancer. He was a great companion over the last 13 years...and I miss him a ton, but I know I made the right decision.

I made another trip back east in September, actually my first vacation since all this started. I went to NY for a friend's wedding and hooked up with some other friends from grad school. I decided I could not go to the east coast without seeing my nieces, so I drove 8 hours to VA to see them for 3 days and returned to NY for the wedding. Yeah, I'm crazy, some things don't change.

Then I got more distressing news: the sudden death of my surgeon, Dr. Troy Brinkerhoff on October 1, the first day for breast cancer awareness month. This was a HUGE shock to the entire medical community here in the east valley, not to mention his famiy and patients. He was a great man and great surgeon who had devoted his practice to helping women fight this disease. I couldn't believe it. I really trusted Dr. Brinkerhoff, and the thought of having to start the process of looking for another surgeon was too overwhelming. So I didn't, at least not right away.

In December, I finished the last of my Herceptin treatments. 52 weeks of going to the doctors every Thursday was now behind me. It was AWESOME.

Christmas this year was great...the entire family came out to AZ. It was quite the event with 9 adults and 2 little ones. There was no way we would all fit into my little condo, but the Lord provided for that. Some friends let me borrow their home. They had moved to TX, but their house was still on the market here in town, completely furnished as they had not yet moved their furniture. It was the perfect size, and we all had a really great time. It was particularly awesome to spend an entire week with my nieces, especially since all our visits before were 3 days at the most.

Right after everyone left, I had yet another mammogram, but this time they said everything was stable....I was clean. NO EVIDENCE OF CANCER. It was a great ending to a long year.

Well, that was 2006. 2007 has started off in some pretty interesting ways, but I will share that in the next entry. I hope to do that soon.

This whole BLOG started off to be a way I could work through things and get things out of my head....and I have an awful lot of things I need to get out these days. I have some more to share about what God has been showing me too. I don't know what it was I had to share from the last entry...but I am sure the Lord will remind me if it is that important.

Till then.

in HIM

anne