What do you say........

Euphoric

That's a pretty big word, but as I sit here and type this post I think it most accurately describes the feeling I have at this moment.  I almost don't know what else to say or what to do with myself.  This disease has consumed my life for the past eight and half months with such a strong and definite presence, its hard to believe that it is gone.

Just the same ole, same ole

I waited around yesterday Monday April 18th expecting to get the news of the pathology from the surgeons office and was disappointed when I didn't get the call.  So, today I went out and on the with my day as usual.  I took Brady to school, took something to Kevin at school and headed home.  When I got home Pat was up and I completely forgot that I meant to go to the store first (chemo brain), so I went back out.  Of course this would be the time when the nurse Jennifer from the surgeons office would call me.  I was standing in the checkout line at the Winn Dixie when I saw her number calling.  Well, I wasn't gonna not answer it, but was worried about how it would all pan out if it was bad news and I was there getting groceries all alone.  Jennifer told me the glorious news, no evidence of metastatic breast cancer and that the two lymph nodes they took were cancer free!!!  I started crying, Jennifer was crying and she said times like this are what she loves about her job.  Well, remember I wasn't alone......the Winn Dixie employees (many of whom I know by face) were all quite concerned as I was standing at the checkout crying, I told them the news and they all applauded.  Funny, it was just life going on as it always has.

Home

I called Pat from the checkout line with the good news and he was so very happy.  I loaded up the food and got home to my husband at the front door with the biggest smile on his face.  We are just still in disbelief.  The only thing that will make me even happier is to see and tell my kids this afternoon.  I thank you all and love you all for your support and prayers. I could not have done it without all of you.

An Update...........

Promises, Promises…….

I know I promised to do weekly updates and I failed miserably, sorry.  I can’t understand how I can’t seem to get things done when I have all the time in the world to do things.  I haven’t had any work again for some time so I have all day to blog, clean, do laundry, etc.  I can’t seem to do it all.  I did much  better at getting everything done when I was crazy busy with work.

First a little something to make you laugh

Things you don't want to hear during surgery:

Hand me that...uh...that...uh.....thingie.

Oh no! I just lost my Rolex.

Damn, there go the lights again...

"You know, there's big money in kidneys. Heck, shes got two of them."

Everybody stand back! I lost my contact lens!

Could you stop that thing from beating; it's throwing my concentration off.

Anyone see where I left that scalpel?

Nurse, did this patient sign the organ donor card?

Don't worry; I think it's sharp enough.

Now, I ask you for your prayers again....

This Friday April 15^th I will have my surgery.  After a lot of discussion and thought I am going with the lumpectomy.  Since I will have to have radiation and if I had a mastectomy I would not be able to have implants as an option to reconstruction.  The options for reconstruction would be flap type surgeries, that, to be quite honest, I don’t think turn out all that great.  My surgeon believes that the lumpectomy is totally doable and may not make any cosmetically poor appearance of the breast.  That being said, we are hoping for clear margins because if they can’t get clear margins I may not have a choice but to have a mastectomy later.  At the time of surgery I will also be having a Sentinel Node Biopsy and we are hoping for clean lymph nodes.  The chemo did a great job and the only thing left of the large tumor are three small areas that are 6mm each. I will go in at 10:00am for the wire localization (they put a wire in by ultrasound where the tumor is so the surgeon can find it) and my surgery is scheduled for 12:00 noon.  Barring any complications, I should be going home that afternoon.

YES, OF COURSE!!!!!!!!!!!

YES, of course I am scared shipless, I am afraid that I won’t wake up, I am afraid that I will be sick when I am done with surgery and have to stay overnight, I am afraid that the surgeon won’t get clear margins, I am afraid that my lymph nodes will come back with cancer in them, I am AFRAID!!!! But, I will be as brave as I can and be back to me soon. Please keep me in my prayers still and mostly keep my husband and boys in your prayers as they will be so very worried.

JUST IN TIME

LONG WEEK

Its only Wednesday and the week already seems long.  Yesterday was an extremely hard day.  My fingers, feet and legs were very uncomfortable from the neuropathy.  Walking around the house was a struggle due to the muscle pain.  Yesterday was also a "down" day.  For those of you out there saying "Keep you head up Beth, You can do it Beth, You're gonna beat this Beth" I know, but I am entitled to my pity party, feel sorry for me days and yesterday was one of them.  As I write this I can take joy in the fact that I am almost done with my hard chemo, however, I still have surgery (which is VERY scary), radiation (which is very overwhelming) and Herceptin till December.  I am also pretty tired of not having hair.  I would give anything to have to shave my legs if it meant I had hair on my head.

BETTER DAY

I started my post early this morning, so I was still not sure how I felt at 5:30am.  Today has been much better than today.  I did a little work, went to my Moms to move her answering machine for her and went shopping.  Since I have been home I started the corned beefs for tomorrow and I am currently baking a strawberry cobbler (found some frozen strawberries in my freezer).  When I am done with the cobbler I will make my Irish soda bread for tomorrow. I look forward to celebrating St. Patricks Day with Kelly, Jenn, Kevin, Brady and Abby. See ya.

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!!!!

D-DAY

I am trying desperately to type in a timely fashion, but due to the HORRIBLE neuropathy and sores on my fingers,  it is taking a long time.  I was going to post yesterday, but Brady was home sick and I wanted to get some cleaning done.  This week is the final countdown of my heavy duty chemo. On Friday March 18 I will have my last Taxol with Herceptin.  Though I would rather have chocolates or a spa day, I am considering this a pretty decent birthday present.  I still have to do Herceptin till December, but this should be a piece of cake.  As I said earlier, my hands are suffering from neuropathy.  The chemo has taken its toll in a big way this week and my hands are VERY numb and I have alot of cracks and sores on my finger tips.  Also this week is my MRI.  The MRI should tell us how much the tumor has shrunk and what kind of margins the surgeon can get with lumpectomy.  It should also show what kind of lymph node involvement there is.  Today I ask you my friends to keep in your prayers two friends of mine.  I have two friends that are currently in question about their breast health. Thanks.

JANUARY............A BLUR

January was a blur, so I am going to try and catch up and blog at least weekly, hang on to that thought my friends.

Merry Christmas!!!!!

DECEMBER

December proved to be a busy month between treatments being every week and the holidays and other obligations.  Brady my youngest son is a member of the Bach Festival Youth Choir and had several performances during the month, which really helped to get us in the holiday spirit.  The first performance was actually at the Festival of the Trees in November.  The second one was Christmas in the Park, in Winter Park.  We had a great time at that one, despite the VERY cold weather.  We got blankets, wine and some food to eat and enjoyed the time with my friend Kelly, Jenn, Mehmet and Burak, as well as my brother and sister-in-law, Jim and Pam.  Oh and I can't forget Jenn's little guy Slade.  I don't have any pics of the concert in the park, but below is a pic from the Festival of the Trees, its of Brady and his best friend Abby, Kelly's daughter.

After a busy few weeks the week before Christmas seem to be peaceful and take its time getting there.  I was uber prepared for Christmas, all the shopping was done mostly online a month before, so I tried to enjoy the time with the kids and make the most of it.  It was also a little boring as my friend Kelly was in Turkey for two weeks.  I usually talk with Kelly most every day and that wasn't possible being half a world away.  Once Kelly returned on the 22nd everything seemed normal again, and then time flew.  Christmas eve was a busy day, we went to Kelly's to exchange gifts and see our friends and then off to my Mom's to spend some time with Grammy and Pop Pop.  We then rush home to do some cooking for Pam, Jim and Matt who came over for the evening.  Christmas day started out great, the boys seem to be pleased with all the loot they got and were surprised at the Ipod touches.  The whole day seemed to be great until about 4:30, then it hit me.  I got a slight "chemo fever" and was down for the count. Pat and the boys had dinner without me and I slept through till the next morning.

HERE'S HOPING 2011 WILL BE BETTER

December being over seemed to bring with it the hope that 2010 was gone and hopefully was bad news that came with it.  I started out 2011 with a slumber party, yep, a slumber party.  Though I was having some side effects, I was invited to spend new years eve with my friends Kelly and Jenn for a slumber party at Jenn's house.  Jenn was more than accommodating and we had a blast.  I rather enjoyed watching everyone get tipsy and silly.  While over at Jenn's house I called my brother and sister-in-law, Jim and Pam, who live around the block from Jenn.  Jim and Pam didn't have plans, so they came over and added to the fun.  We had food and drinks and the kids played and danced and I had a nice night.  At 12 we hooped and hollered and shot off fireworks. A good time was had by all.  We woke up the next morning and it was better than a bed and breakfast. Jenn had LOTS of yummy things to eat.  Eventually, we gathered up and headed home.

Onward

HERE WE GO AGAIN

I was so pleased that my first phase of chemo was over and was now on the cusp on starting a whole new regimen.  I was told by the Oncologist that this would be a breeze compared to the AC.  I would have 12 taxols at three week in a row spurts and then the fourth Friday would be Herceptin. Herceptin is special for tumors like mine that are HER2neu+. About 20 or 25 percent of breast cancers over-express the HER2 protein. Those breast cancers seem to be those whose growth is sometimes stimulated by this particular pathway, and Herceptin can interfere with this growth pathway. On December 10, 2010 I had my first Taxol with Herceptin and WOW that was interesting.  When you are given Taxol you are given a set of pre-meds in case of any allergic reactions or side effects.  They gave me Pepcid, Decadron (steroid) and 50mg of Benadryl. The Pepcid and Decadron went fine, but the Benadryl through me for a loop.  It was like an out of body experience and it was awful.  My legs were spasming and I felt so loopy.  My Chemo nurse Diane stopped my chemo and we waited a while for it to improve.  After about forty minutes the "weirdness" was manageable and we continued the chemo.  Diane contacted my Oncologist and requested for my dosage to be reduced for the next week.  Thankfully the Doc agreed and the next week was much better. In fact, I rather enjoyed the Benadryl as it made me sleepy and I got to take a good solid nap.

WE GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS

I have introduced you to some of my friends along this journey, new and old, however, the next group of friends that I will talk about are quite amazing.  For those of you who don't know, a few years ago I got interest in a hobby called Geocaching.  It sounds crazy, but you use a GPS to go out into the world to find Geocaches.  There are over 1 million worldwide and its is continually growing.  Geocachers have "handles" or nicknames, mine is foley44. Over the past few years of geocaching I have made friends.  I first met thelanes (Allen)  he lives close by.  Then one geocacher named imtomcat (Tommy) contacted me to see if I wanted to me he and his wife and we instantly became friends.  Flatouts (Vince and Janet) who are always there with words of hope and encouragement. Over the years I have met soooo many others along the trails and mostly at geocaching events.  At the events we eat, we talk, we have raffles and just enjoy the geofellowship of each other.  Two of my friends are Dale n Barb (Dale and Barb).  Dale and Barb started the Space Coast Geocachers Association (SCGA) and have a Geocaching store on Merritt Island and I met them for the first time at an event that they held. When I started my blog I put it out on Facebook and got immediate response from so many including all my geocaching friends. As time passed from my initial "coming out" I got lots of moral and Facebook support from the geocaching community.  I wasn't prepared for what came next.  I was checking my email and got an alert from Groundspeak (the Geocaching site) that a new event was coming up. I went to the cache page and found a link to a Facebook page as well.  The Facebook page gave it all away, the event was for me and my family and was the idea of Flatouts (Vince and Janet and Dale n Barb (Dale and Barb), I am still overwhelmed to this day.  They had special SCGA pink t-shirts made to sell, Dudewithjeeps (Dane and Anne) made BBQ sandwich's and they sold meal tickets and they had a large raffle of items. Oh, I forgot Barb made REALLY good chocolate chip cookies.  Below are some pics of the event.  These are some of the most amazing people that I know and I value and love all of them very much.  I am listing them here too, by there geonames of course.  Dale n Barb, Flatouts, Dudeswithjeeps, imtomcat, BeckiQuilt, Plunder Cats, Jackie and Bob, Bojab, kleetus, YankaBucs, 10ecmtgrl, cyclspin1, Beeortoise & LovelyLisa, Margarena, parkhoppers, familycachefinders, pjavellana, RonC, Ozzie321, kindbus, efrodo, jim32809, thelanes, KacheKlowns, SharrowFamily, Smeagol!, grubbsterscott, poosu, FirefighterSta24, War1man and Mimi, fegan, loxmudprincess, Clan Riffster, jerann, DRDM and Raider, skeletor10, Tony's Girl, Varelitt09, GrizzSteve, seastar255, the1acwright, The Jailbirds, stashseekers, loxahatcheekid, Sweetly_Broken, Possumme, kdog44.

Geocachers Galore

Riff and Janet

Bob and Paul

The Family

Me and Vicki



Tommy, Dale, Dana and Anne