Choices

Good morning ladies!

So far so good for me,

My lumpectomy is tomorrow and today I have a mammogram, ultrasound, and Savi seed placement and I think the dye injection. Not worried about the surgery, just the outcome. I think that there is no node involvement, but will see what happens post-surgery. The neuropathy has continued with no change for the last few weeks which I am not happy with, but oh well it is what it is.

I hope that everyone is okay with their treatments and just living.

The posts are fewer and fewer now. Will update you all when I can.

@marlakeeth I have been thinking of you and praying that all went well and you are getting lots of loving care as you recover.

@claoh So sorry that the yuckiness of chemo is lasting longer now. How many more sessions do you have to have?

I resumed work Monday, thankfully from home. As I anticipated, sitting up at a desk was the greatest physical challenge. By the end of the first day, my back hurt so badly, I almost cried. Tuesday, I decided to order a seat cushion with an opening underneath the tailbone. It came that night (what did we do before Amazon?!?) and the next couple days went a lot better. Not completely pain-free but much more manageable.

Now that I am past the "big" surgeries, I am having to get real about the financial toll this past year has taken on us. Cancer takes so much in every area of life, doesn't it? I'm hoping to feel empowered by getting on top of this area, especially in the budget area of groceries/eating out/discretionary stuff. At the same time, I need to be realistic about energy level for shopping and meal prep. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Please be extra compassionate toward yourselves, lovely ladies. I'm praying for you!

Good morning Marla. I'm following with great interest since I'll be going through the same process in about 2 weeks for my lumpectomy which is scheduled for the 14th of March. Currently nothing in lymph nodes based on MRI, but we never know for sure. Prayers no cancer cells found in the Sentinel lymph nodes.

I have my Herceptin and Perjeta targeted drugs infusion tomorrow. Done with the docetaxel cytotoxic chemo drug. Hopefully no severe side effects since we're not sure which drug(s) caused all of the problems. No more Neulasta either which has it's own set of side effects. This will be my last infusion of these targeted drugs for the HER2+ protein until I return from Mexico and start radiation treatment. This assumes no residual cancer is found and results given in Pathology Report. Fingers crossed on that. I finally broke down an bought a Hanes light support sports style bra for post surgery. No wires. No compression. I haven't worn a bra in over 15 years. Only camisoles. Will see how long I can tolerate this. I suspect not very long! Lol.

I hope your surgery goes very well and not too much pain. My doctor said about 2 weeks recovery for this surgery. Take care and let us know how it goes. I'm sure we'll have notes to compare on our experiences and outcomes on the lymph nodes. FWIW, you may want to ask your surgeon for a referral to PT for your shoulder area and arm pit due to lymph nodes surgery. My neuropathy PT says she'll work with me on this after my surgery to loosen up/exercise the muscles etc.

Hello ladies!

I figured I'd better say something or else you guys are going to think I fell off the edge of the Earth LOL.

I am doing well on Xeloda. At first I was having a little bit of nausea after I took it but then I started taking it during my meals and I have not had any problems since. I'm very encouraged by that. On the flip side I seem to have lost my balance and then therefore. I am back on the Walker and will be getting a wheelchair this coming week. I'm very surprised how much I lose my balance and don't quite understand why that is. I'm also getting double vision which is kind of fun when you're trying to pick which button it is on your phone you want to hit lol. I had a brain scan done Friday which was just a tri-monthly checkup that they run same as the pet Scan. I will have those results next week. If I don't see anything in the results I'm going to get a hold of my oncologist and ask her what she thinks is going on with me. I'm sure there's someone on the team that can take a look at me and figure this out. It's the one thing about having a really big team you may or may not see everybody that's on it. But they have their weekly meetings and go over everything in their departments so that everybody is up to speed for as the patient is concerned.

We've had a few bites on our house as far as showings go. We're just waiting for all this to go through before we decide where we're going to move to. It's too much to add to our plates right now with everything else that's going on with me. My husband is exhausted and I'm having issues with not being able to wake up. I'm always sleeping. I can understand some sleeping because your body is fighting this cancer but I don't get sleeping as much as I do. I'm really out in third Field trying to understand all this and knowing that it's beyond all my research that I've done so far on this board.

I love reading your blogs! Please keep them up, I know I have not been on for a while but I also have a lot of issues that I am trying to deal with. I really shouldn't use that as an excuse since this board is for people to be able to see as an example what we all are going through. Every one of us is different but there are gems in these blogs that I greatly appreciate.

BTW I also had a lumpectomy in 2013 for breast cancer on the opposite side of the cancer I have now. What I'm hearing from all of you are basically the same answers I was given for my lumpectomy. My oncologist explained to me that even though it looks like we got everything and that my sentinel node was clear that there may be residual cancer cells in my body that are just waiting for a signal to fire up again. That was exactly 10 years ago and totally different cancer type (HER 2+). My oncologists were a little surprised because it's not normal to have two different types of cancer. The other odd thing about triple negatives is that it happens to women under 40 years of age and Black or Hispanic. I don't fit into any of these rules. The other thing that I don't seem to fit into is the fact that triple negative being as aggressive as it is should start covering areas that has gotten hold of. For me this metastases consists of only little Islands that have not spread. I sometimes wonder if I have something in my system that can be used to help others who find themselves with triple negative. It is a conversation that I want to hold with my oncologist at some point.

That's it for you now. Claoh please keep me informed about your walk. I miss hearing from you.

Hugs

RocdocVic,

As I understand it, the body does not like empty spaces and will fill them with fluid. The seroma was above the tumor site and looked like a small orange in size. It did not hurt but felt weird. The seroma was in my right breast after surgery and the Dr. used ultrasound to locate the fluid areas which appeared as black holes on the screen. This area was drained with a needle and syringe and she removed about a 1/2 cup of old blood and fluid. She numbed the area so I did not feel anything, but I was a bit sore the next day. The lymph nodes were clear and only a few cancer cells remained. Dr. said that the radiation would take care of those cells. I have another appt with the surgeon on Thursday the 14th with my surgeon to see if they need to remove any more fluid. In the meantime, I purchased a sport/compression bra that I wear 24/7. I go back to the oncologist on Friday the 15th to get an overall explanation again, which will be great. Don't think that I will need any more chemo. I did have genetic testing done last June which showed that I have the PALB2 gene mutation. Since that was a while ago and memory fades, I will have another appointment with her this week so I can better understand what all of this means for me.

Other than that, healing is going well, incision site near my armpit seems to be the most irritating and painful. Now just doing my stretching and arm exercises. Oh, and my eyebrows and eyelashes are making their return! Have a nice fuzzy head of hair, just very very short for now. Hope this helps you RocDoc!

Talk soon ladies

Hi ladies

Tomorrow will be my last day of the first course of chemo. I'm very grateful that I have had no side effects with this new pill. I am getting a little bit tired but I find it interesting that it only is starting to feel that way when I'm at the end of this treatment. After this I have one week off and then I'm back on it again for two weeks. It definitely beats chemo in my book. The chemo really ripped me apart including the hospitalizations that I had. I think I'm headed in a better way now.

Claoh I just want you to know that what's happening to you is just as important as what's happening to everyone else on this site. There is no greater than or lesser than here. We are all walking the walk and as friends it is good to have someone like you who helps encourages and prays for us. I do believe your prayers have touched a lot of things in my life and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that.

As far as the DNA goes, there are some that have DNA flags and some that don't. I'm one of the ones that doesn't. There is nothing there in my system that says this was what it was that fired up the cancer. I've had a ton of these DNA tests of different types and there really is nothing. I just wanted to let you know that so that if yours comes back with nothing then that also is just a part of it.

As far as the radiation, after I had my lumpectomy I went through 6 weeks of radiation. At that point my treatment was complete. I remained cancer free for 10 years. My first cancer was a HER+, a ductal carcinoma in situ. My sentinel node was clean. Just another thing that makes my oncologist wonder how I came to have triple negative.

I had my brain scan and I'm waiting for the results. I have a video conference this Thursday to go over the results although at Cleveland Clinic when you get a test done it is automatically posted. I looked it over and saw nothing there so that is another happy step in my walk. That will be two scans now that has shown negative for cancer of the brain. I'm really impressed with the gama knife surgery they did on my brain when they first diagnosed the cancer that was there. It was a simple operation that left no residual symptoms. I wish everything would be that easy LOL.

Not much else is going on right now. Still waiting for the house to sell. All you ladies take care of yourselves. Find something that makes you happy and do it, including Mexico trips. :-)

Y'all be blessed.

Hello, friends! I'm so thankful that you share here when you can. I can't believe it's been a couple weeks since I have participated in this discussion.

Today is 11 weeks since surgery and next Friday is the 1-year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. To say this past year has been a blur is an understatement. I still have a couple small incision areas that have not fully healed and at OT yesterday, she found a couple more "spitting sutures" still making their way out. It's frustrating but it's going to take as long as it takes. Next post-op is Tuesday but I'll be seeing a different PA than usual. So, I don't think the topic of revision will come up until my regular PA is back from vacation. I don't feel ready to discuss revision and feel anxious every time I think about it. I know the surgeon and his staff are thrilled with how things turned out but I'm very aware that reconstructed breasts, even using your own tissue, aren't really breasts. And the lack of "anatomy" makes it doubly hard to accept them as breasts. I don't feel like I can even start to accept them until I can do the medical tattooing but if I want tattooing, I need to be done and healed from all the surgeries. If I don't feel like I can decide if I want any revisions before seeing them with the tattoos and I can't do the tattoos until after any revision, where does that leave me?! Hence the anxiety.

I think I mentioned previously that I started seeing a psychiatrist. She's started me on meds that I think are really helping. And one of them has significantly reduced the number of hot flashes I'm having! That was unexpected since it's a medication for depression. So nice to have a positive side effect from a medication for once!

I've finished three weeks back at work now. Things are going a bit better but it's hard to accomplish anything beyond work most days. Tomorrow, my husband has his first free Saturday in a while and we may take the opportunity to go to DisneyWorld. But it's already getting hot here in Central Florida so we may need to play it by ear.

Sorry I'm all over the place tonight! Hope to hear updates from you all soon!

Quick update. I had my lumpectomy on Thursday morning. All went well. My Surgeon was able to locate 3 Sentinel lymph nodes for collection and testing for cancer. She removed the tumor and extra tissue to make sure she got it all. Boy with 2 incisions, one across my left breast just above the nipple and the 2nd one in my armpit area, the swelling, bruising and pain are noticeable. Using frozen peas and corn bags to ice everything down and taking Hydrocodone and ibuprofen for pain and inflammation.

I see my surgeon on Friday for check-up. Hopefully the pathology report results will be ready when I see my Oncologist in 1.5 weeks. Fingers crossed no residual cancer found. Then off to Mexico for 3 weeks mental health break and recovery trip before radiation therapy.

Hope everyone is doing well. Take care.