The BREAST times of my life?!?!: 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.