Race for the Cure - and a Delayed Race to my Cure



In my chemo chair, laptop out,
brother there ready to support,
before we knew it wasn't
happening today

Argh! Today I went to Presby with my two favorite guys (Ben and Ryan, my brother), all ready for round 2 of Taxol – which would be round 6 overall, with 10 more to go. The nurse poked her big hook needle through my port and drew my blood as usual, then took it to the lab so we could make sure my counts were good and we could get the meds started. However – today my labs didn’t come back as expected. I could tell by the nurse’s face that she was going to have bad news before she even said anything. A normal white blood cell count is between 4.8 and 10.8. Last week mine was 5 (already on the low end)….but today it was 1. (Yes, one!) So, the doctor denied me my weekly round of fun. Boo!!! To me, this just means that instead of finishing chemo at the end of June, it will be at least July, and if I had known this, I could have found something much more fun to do during Stella’s Mother’s Day Out day today! Just being honest! It was kind of like putting on your workout clothes, finding a babysitter, driving to the gym, getting geared up to work out, only to find out that all the machines are taken and you have to go home without accomplishing anything. Getting there is more than half the battle!

Ben at chemo today

Not to mention that with my white blood cell count this low, I’m at risk for getting infection – so I’m supposed to avoid crowds, germs, and sick people. They put me on antibiotics as a preventative, gave me a Neupogen shot to boost my WBC count (which I will get every week now), and sent me on my way. So, I’ll go back next week (Thursday or Friday, I’m still waiting to hear from the scheduler) to continue my fight. I guess the silver lining is that I won’t have my chemo hangover on my birthday tomorrow – but I still would have rather had one more treatment under my belt!

Parkeys before the race

In other news (much more fun!) – last Saturday was Race for the Cure! I can’t even begin to say how much fun we had and how supportive everyone was. Thank you to EVERYONE who participated in the race, helped organize our team and team shirts, and donated to Susan G. Komen. We had 25 people on Team Alli, and raised $6,760.00 for Susan G. Komen!!! Yes, that deserves three exclamation points – probably more!!! I know it was a big effort for everyone involved – getting up early, driving to Fort Worth, and contributing financially. A bunch of us went to lunch at Uncle Julio’s afterwards and it was the perfect end to a great day. Thanks again to each one of you – it means more to me than you know!

 

Some of my oldest (as in longest) and favorite friends!
Tiffany, Blaire, Marlo, Sarah,
Meredith, Kim, Alli, Anna, Ashley

Ben and Stella waiting to start the race
(nice shirts!)

Team Alli

Action shot during the race:
Anna, Meredith, Tiffany, Blaire, Alli, Ben, & Stella

 

Action shot during the race: Martin, Mom, Ben, & Stella

Ben, Stella, Luke, Angele, and Ryan at the finish line



Stella and Marlo at the finish line

Finish line: Ryan, Meredith, Kim, Sarah, Marlo, Tiffany, Blaire,
Anna, Stella, Ashley, and Alli

Good news!

Today we got good news! Dr. B. called me and said that of my 4 lymph nodes they biopsied, they ALL came back negative. That means the cancer has not spread! And I don’t have to get bumped to stage 2! And they won’t have to take any more lymph nodes next week during my mastectomy! And I won’t have to get radiation! I am the happiest cancer patient (make that STAGE 1 cancer patient!) you have ever seen right now. :) I am actually looking FORWARD to my big surgery on Wednesday so I can continue the fight and get the rest of these bad cells out of me.

I’m including an illustration so you can see what this means. I know some of you are learning about all of this right along with me, so I thought this would help. Dr. B. took the sentinel (which means “first”) lymph node that was closest to my tumor, along with the 3 others closest to it. There is a whole network of lymph nodes in the breast/armpit area, but the ones he was concerned with were the ones closest to the tumor, because that’s where the cancer cells would have traveled to first, before spreading to other parts of the body. Since they came back clear, that means the ones farther away are clear too, so he doesn’t have to test those. However, I will still need to get chemo, because if one stray cancer cell escaped, it could have traveled through my blood stream, right through the lymph nodes, and ended up somewhere else. So the drugs I receive through chemo will attempt to knock out any stragglers so they won’t come back and haunt me later. But other than any random stray cells, the cancer has not metastasized to the lymph nodes or anywhere else.

My brother told me today that his friend has just scheduled her first mammogram because of my blog. It literally makes me tear up right now to think that someone could avoid all of this, I am SO happy. I know my sister has already scheduled hers too. THANK you all for listening to me. And a friend just told me she made her first donation to Susan G. Komen – you all are amazing! I wish I had acted sooner – I have known for a long time that I had a family history of breast cancer as well as other types of cancer, but I didn’t do anything about it. I wish I had gotten the gene test sooner, so I could have been followed more carefully by doctors. And I wish I had gotten mammograms sooner. But it looks like some good is going to come out of this. And hopefully when you all get your mammograms, you will get GOOD news too!