I'm Still Waiting...

I've received some great comments and a few lengthy emails from some of you about how you'd prioritize your last year of life, but I'd love to hear more! I have been pleasantly surprised to see where my thoughts match up and where they differ. I have learned a lot! So before I post my thoughts, I thought I'd request (beg?) one more time for your insights into life and death. Go ahead, I'm waiting.

Your Thoughts: 1 Year Left

Of the 12 presets available on my radio, 8 are set to light rock, 1 to oldies and 3 to country. I guess that's my way of confessing I like country music (which probably isn't necessary considering where I live). Even though there are quite a few country music songs I enjoy, there are also quite a few I roll my eyes at and change the station. One of those songs is Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying". I've always perceived it as some songwriter's artificial attempt to see how many people he could get to cry. So when that dumb song comes on, I inevitably pick a new preset.

The day after I found out I had cancer in my bones, I was driving home alone from somewhere when that song came on. This time I listened. And it turns out, I was wrong. It's not artificially constructed. There's actually a lot of truth in those lyrics. It really does change your life to find out your life may soon be over. It's something I didn't relate to until I was faced with it myself. I drove around the block a few times until the song played out and then pulled into my driveway a sobbing mess.

So here's my question for you. Suppose you found out that you had limited time left in life. Suppose you were given the news today that you only had a year to live. Take a minute to make a list of what you would do with the last year of your life. What are you doing now that you would drop? What would you want to "get in order"? Would you vacation? Do something dangerous? Get something off your chest? Make changes in your relationships? Leave something behind? What and who would you prioritize?

Now just for fun, suppose you were told that you have 15 years left, but only 15 years. How does your list change? With 15 years to go what adjustments would you make to how you are living your life right now? What things are you already doing that you would hold onto more fervently?

Now either by comment or by email, please share your thoughts with me. I'll post my list on my next post.

This Thanksgiving when you make your gratitude list, don't forget to appreciate your precious gift of time.

Chemo Round 2 Update

I still have little to complain about, but Thursday turned out to be an adventure! Thanks again to wonderful people taking my kids ALL day - Julie, Amy, Joyce and Savannah!

Here's the brief update. Everything seemed great Thursday morning - Austin went to school, my girls to playgroup, Anthony to work. I got up to get breakfast and fainted, followed by the chills, followed by a high fever (102). Fevers and cancer are never a good combination. My dad rushed down to take care of me. Although I felt chilled to bone and hot to the touch I was otherwise ok. The doc checked me out and thought I might possibly have pneumonia so I was sent to the hospital for chest xrays. While there I fainted again. But we got the xrays and I got home (thank goodness I wasn't driving myself). My xrays came out clear - no pneumonia. My fever was down to 99ish by the time I went to bed. Phew.

The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful except for a bit of fatigue and nausea. But I made it to church again today so I'm feeling delighted at how well I'm doing! I think this reaction came as a result of getting a different drug on Wed which I'll only get every 4 weeks. Here's hoping that this next round of chemo won't produce a similar bad Thursday seeing as how all the doctors will be out of the office eating turkey. And I'd kind of like to enjoy my own turkey dinner too. Fingers crossed.

Chemo Round 2

Thanks to Diane, Linnie and Julie who helped watch my kids today while I did this:

I wore my Star Trek shirt today. With pins in my knees and a port in my chest I feel like I am turning into a Borg after all.

Round 2 of chemo went pretty smoothly. It's a long process to get through the whole thing. The first 1.5 hours is prep stuff - drawing blood to check my white blood cell counts and such and then meeting with the doc to check on how I'm feeling (and a lot of waiting around during all that). Then the infusion part is about 3.5 hours with 4 different bags of meds they pump in - bone strengthener, Benadryl, steroid, then Taxol. This time the Benadryl beat the steroid and I ended up sleeping in the chair for about 2 hours while the chemo dripped in. Not a bad way to do it. I started to have a reaction to the chemo again so they put it on a super slow drip again. That part of the infusion would typically take 1 hour but it took me 2. But that's fine. My babysitters were wonderfully flexible and I didn't throw up so life is good. I was still very exhausted when we got home and took another 2 hour nap. Now I'm feeling the buzzy steroid feeling in my chest and head again, but I'm sure it will pass by morning. No nausea or pain so far. Fingers crossed that those won't hit!

I also found out today that with this particular chemo I may not completely loose my hair. It will just thin out over the course of the next 3 months. With my thick hair I may just end up looking "normal" :o). But that also means that I get to shed everywhere like a cat. I might just shave it anyway if it gets too annoying.

Doctor of Hope

I just have to throw out a public THANK YOU to Dr. T (even though she doesn't read my blog). Dr. T is my surgeon and she has been instrumental in building my hope for the future. I have had 4 interactions with her (which is actually a lot in the course of 6 weeks) and each time she has built me up. That there's a good doc.

What did she do? How does a doctor build a patient's hope?

My first appointment was early in this process, back when all I knew was that I had stage 2 breast cancer. I was plenty worried about a "stage 2" diagnosis and concerned about my long-term chances. She came into the room and almost the first words out of her mouth were, "This is very curable" and "You can fight this thing." We talked about the options and the statistics and I left that meeting feeling like a boxer eager to get in the ring.

A week later, in meeting with a different doctor, I got the result that my cancer was already in my bones. That doctor did a good job delivering that tough news and I was actually very impressed with how it was handled. But, I was scared out of my mind. I came home and cried for an hour.

The next day I called Dr. T's office to order a copy of my medical records. After her nurse got those pulled out for me she said, "Actually, Dr. T is standing right here and she'd like to talk to you." She got on the phone and told me how sorry she was about the bad news and that she wasn't able to deliver it herself as the medical report had arrived at her office all of 10 minutes before I met with the second doctor. She then told me that she "just wanted to give me a hug through the phone" and tell me I still had a lot of reasons to have hope. A bone metastasis was very favorable to a lung or liver metastasis.  Plus my cancer is estrogen positive which means we can fight it long-term with hormone therapy, which she had seen great results with first-hand. She encouraged me to continue on the course of doing chemotherapy first and told me I was going to see the existing tumors shrink and that would give me a lot of encouragement. She told me to hang in there. I hung up from that conversation and cried, this time tears of relief. I felt like the sun had come out from behind the clouds. From that conversation I found the confidence to believe that I would live to raise to my children.

I saw Dr. T again today for a follow up visit for my port surgery. Strange... I didn't even pay a co-pay today. I wonder if this visit was even on the books? It was a short visit and we hardly even talked about my port. Instead she wanted to see how I was doing. She was encouraged at how well I handled my first round of chemo and thought maybe I'd have a pretty easy go of it. She told me to call for anything and gave me a hug before she left. Again, I was renewed in mind and spirit.

There are certain people who are in a position to do an especial amount of good for another. When in a health crisis, who knows better how things will turn out than your doctor? And when your doctor radiates confident hope in your future it's impossible not to believe it.

Thank you Dr. T. You have given me hope.

A Functional(?) Body

We took the kids to the dinosaur museum tonight. It's familiar territory to them so they feel free to run ahead of us to their favorite places (like the water/sand table). I was struggling to keep up with my little crew because I was having a lot of muscle tension in my shoulders and I was limping on my bum right leg. As I hobbled around the corner into the Sand Table room I nearly stumbled over R. She looked up at me and pointed to an 8-year-old girl in a wheelchair across the room. "Look Mom. She can't use her legs." Then R ran off to play.

I was momentarily stunned. For the past several weeks I've been pretty good at focusing on my gratitude that I am still alive. I'm still here and still loving my family! But I forgot to appreciate how lucky I am to have such a functional body. I may have cancer, but I have two working legs and I can walk on my own power. I have two working arms and I can pickup up and carry my baby. I have two working eyes and I can see my children's faces. I have two working ears and I can have long late-night conversations with my husband. I have an undamaged brain (sometimes debatable :o) that allows me to think, feel, and communicate clearly. I think of my mom who fought through cancer and how she continued to have the full use of her body up until the very end (though it got weaker during her chemo rounds). Of all the diseases to be struck with, I think I still have a lot to be grateful for.

Not only am I grateful to still have my life, I'm grateful to have this wonderful working body to go through life with!

Antsy

It's Thursday night and I feel antsy. I wonder a lot how much more time I have on this Earth. I figure the odds are that I've got at least a couple years, but it's amazing how fast a couple years can go. I want to be ready to die when the time comes. For me that means leaving behind stories of my life so that my children will know about me and hopefully learn from me even if I'm not here to tell my stories myself. It also means leaving behind love notes for my family and friends. It also means deepening all those relationships I care so much about, but that I have not taken time for because I always thought I had all the time in the world. My life BEFORE cancer was spent cleaning and organizing my house. Now my priorities are different. But it's still hard to find the time for these important things in the midst of caring for 3 young children (even though they're a major part of those important things!). So I'm feeling antsy about whether or not it's going to get done. Days can fly by and my health may decline and a couple years could disappear before I know it.

Chemo Round 1

So I started chemo today. I think most everyone that knows me has found out the news now thanks to Facebook. I should've taken a picture of me sitting in my little recliner hooked up to the IV. Next time, I guess. The chemo session went well. Took about 5 hours all told, but it should go faster in future weeks as we get the routine down. They first pumped me full of a bag of Benadryl which just about had me completely knocked out (I wish!). Then they pumped me full of a Steroid that perked me right back up again. Then I started on the chemo drip. They warned me to flag them down if I had any reactions to the med. About 10 minutes in I was hit by a wave of feeling flushed, nauseated and short of breath. Anthony raised his hand and 3 nurses ran over and turned off the machine, handed me a barf bag and gave me oxygen. I recovered almost as fast as I got ill! They were great. So they pumped another bag of Steroids in and had me wait 30 minutes, then started the chemo drip again at half the speed and this time we got through it all. So far today I am feeling fine. I feel buzzy in my head and chest, which might be all the steroid, but otherwise just as normal as I felt this morning. But tomorrow and Friday are more likely to be the harder days, so we'll see. During all this Anthony and I attempted to watch The Avengers, but with all the interruptions we only made it through half the movie. We also met a nice couple there, our age, Rayna and Mark, who live close by. I find it very helpful to talk to other people about their experiences. It's just nice to know there are a lot of us going through all this together and this cancer patient community (past and present) has a natural way of reaching out to each other. It's actually very cool.

The Fight Begins

I am 34 years old, I have 3 children ages 6, 4 and 1, and I have stage 4 breast cancer. This is my first diagnosis - I never had a round with "breast cancer only". It has metastasized to my bones, which I am told is favorable to other possible locations like lungs or liver. My mother had breast cancer for 14 years that was metastasized to her liver for the last 8 years. She passed away in September, 2 weeks before my own journey with cancer began. After a month of tests and doctor visits and receiving bad news after bad news, I finally am starting Taxol treatments. I am just at the beginning of my fight.

But I feel compelled to record my journey. Right after we got the "Stage 4" news, my husband found this blog http://michigoose-longtermbcsurvivor.blogspot.com/ of a lady who has lived with breast cancer in her bones for 14 years and is still going. She was diagnosed at age 34 when her daughter was only 2. She is an inspiration to me. I have every intention of living to raise my children into their adulthood. In fact I have every intention of being around when my grandchildren are born. Since I am following in my mother's footsteps, I intend to live to the same age she did which was 61. So why not start a blog now? Maybe 14 or 20 years from now I will be an inspiration to someone just starting their own cancer fight.