Home Sweet Home

There’s nothing like spending 3 nights and 4 days in a hospital that make you appreciate the comforts of home…..like not being woken up all night by strange nurses for vital signs, and having your very own blankets, towels, homemade food, and family all at your side. Having my sister and niece here has been an extra special treat – they even took Stella to the Dallas Aquarium yesterday – she definitely needed the outing and they had so much fun too! I'm not sure what I would have done without them here. I got to rest and nap so much that I almost felt normal again. Well, til the pain meds wore off – good thing they sent me home with plenty of those.

We are learning how to empty my drains (I feel like Angelina Jolie with vials of blood around my neck) and change my bandages every day. I’m hoping I will get the drains out at the plastic surgeon when I go to my follow-up appointment this Friday – fingers crossed! I am a little less sore every day, although this is definitely the most pain I've ever been in since childbirth. And not nearly as fun. But as I've always said, one step at a time I'm knocking this out, and I'll do whatever I've got to do to fight through this - and it seems to be working!!!

Stella has been enjoying her time with Uncle Ryan, and definitely with Da-eee back home again. Things are slowly getting back to normal. I have to say, I have never felt so loved in my life – just this week, the wedge pillows (thanks Tracey B!), the flowers (thanks Dad/Nancy, Kym/Nelly/Meredith, my MOPS group, Roger/Marc/Junie, Jennifer/John/Pat, and Tiffany!), dinners (thanks Kelsey and Annie!), breakfasts (thanks Mary!), sweets (thanks Becky and Vanessa!), super thoughtful gifts (thanks Ting! and Wednesday playgroup!), help with Stella (thanks everyone!!), and friends who are STILL keeping Chopper (thanks Ben & Kim!) have been amazing. They have cheered me up so much. I know I'm forgetting some people but I am absolutely overwhelmed with all the support. I can’t wait to pay it forward when I am all recovered and can help others who go through difficult times like I have. And Ben and my Mom - no one has helped me out like you have - I will be eternally grateful for all you've done throughout this process. Love you all!

All Clear!!!

I realize this is my second update today - but I just received the BEST news possible and there's no way I couldn't share it. My breast cancer surgeon's partner, Dr. G., just came by my hospital room to tell me she just got my pathology results back from my mastectomy on Wednesday. There was not ONE cancer cell in ANY of the tissue they removed during surgery - which means that Dr. B. got it ALL when he removed the original lump in December!!! They still believe it was the right decision for me to have done the bilateral mastectomy, because of the gene I carry and the risk of recurrence, but this is the best news we could have possibly hoped for!!! Hallelujah!!

I have no photos or illustrations to demonstrate my excitement - but I'm sure you understand. I will still have to undergo chemo, in case any straggler cells escaped into my bloodstream - it will be the best prevention of it ever coming back - but for now I am just absolutely thrilled. I will have to stay at the hospital through tomorrow because of a low grade fever I've had today - but that is the least of my concerns. Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!!!

Recovering…Another Step Forward

I am making progress and moving towards going home from the hospital! I have gotten both IVs removed, so pain meds and antibiotics are strictly pills now. I got to have my catheter taken out, got a sponge bath, put on my own pj’s, stand up and walk to the bathroom – and sit in a chair! Who knew that could be so exciting? :) I also got to see Stella – my mom and the babysitter brought her up to my hospital room yesterday for a visit. Yippee!! It was totally the highlight of my day. Today I got to take a real shower, and put on my own real clothes. The surgeon said I may be able to go home tonight or tomorrow.

So my thought for the day is this (it’s not about getting mammograms this time) – it’s to make sure to live life to the fullest, because you never know what’s in store ahead. Hug and kiss your children every day, and tell your family and friends you love them. Even if we all lived to be 100, life is short and precious and should never be taken for granted. Appreciate the loved ones in your life, and let them know every day. Schnookems, you are my world and I couldn't have made this through this nightmare without you, and Stella, even though you won't remember this, you are the one and only other love of my life. Mom, Martin, and Ryan, thanks for always being there for me, and Dad, for all your support. Tracey and Caitlin, I can't wait to see you tomorrow. Blaire, Angele, Tiffany, Mandy, and Ashley - thank you so much for your visits, and EVERYONE thanks for your messages, notes, calls, and texts, you all mean the world to me.

Bye Bye BC!

Actually, make that bye bye BC, bye bye Bs, hello expander implants, and hello pain. But the worst of it is behind me!!

Yesterday was the big surgery day. I was more and more nervous as each hour went by leading up to it, but at the same time ready to get the rest of these cancer cells out of me!! I got everything ready for my mom and the babysitters to take care of Stella for the rest of the week, packed for the hospital, and set my alarm for 4:15 am. Ben drove us through the pouring rain to Presby, we arrived at 5:30, got checked in, and said hi to all the staff and nurses who we've met along this journey. It's strange to feel like such a regular at the hospital! After the nurses took my vitals, confirmed my name/birthdate and procedure (bilateral mastectomy with expander implants for reconstruction), the chaplain said a prayer, the anesthesiologist started my IV, and Ben and I took a pic and gave each other big hugs and kisses, I got my 'margarita' in my IV and was off to the OR. The last thing I remember was looking at all the giant operating room lamps overhead, and all the people in the room bustling to get ready. I felt bad that all my family and friends were going to have to sit in the waiting room worried for the next 4 hours, while I was asleep. But the next thing I knew, I was in the recovery room, with a nurse asking me to take deep breaths into this machine, which hurt so badly. My chest felt like it had been run over by a truck and crushed, so just taking a deep breath was nearly impossible. But - I was told the surgery had gone very well, with no complications, and most likely the cancer is all gone now - hallelujah!! Of course there is the chance that random cells could have slipped past the lymph nodes and traveled somewhere else in my body, which is why I'll be going through chemo, starting in about 2 weeks. But I'm willing to do whatever I have to do to fight this battle now, move forward, and hopefully not ever have to look back! I will also have to go back to the plastic surgeon several times in the upcoming months, so that he can slowly add saline through a valve in my expander implants, and bring me back to normal. That might just be the highlight of this whole process though – ha!

I then got moved to my room in the Perot building, and finally got to see my schnookems, yay! I took 3 naps yesterday - a record for me. I could barely hold my eyes open, and the nurses were having a hard time managing my nausea from all the pain meds, which weren't helping a lot either. With 2 IV's, 1 catheter, 2 drains in my chest, leg massagers to prevent blood clots, and only being able to lie flat on my back, I wasn't very comfortable, although it was just about exactly what I expected. When I finally got to see Ben, things immediately got better! He had written the sweetest note on the message board in my room and didn't complain once when I kept asking for water, pillows, and blankets.

My brother and mom were there too - and flowers started arriving! First from Ben and Kim H., who are keeping our Australian Shepherd this week - as if they hadn't done enough! And they sent flowers in the shape of a dog from Chopper too. :) Thank you to my MOPS group for the beautiful arrangement, and to Kim and Sarah who brought flowers in person. (Sorry the first thing I did was throw up! Nothing personal I promise, ha!)

I miss Stella so much, but I've gotten pictures and videos and even a balloon that says Get Well Mom. I'm so glad Ben got a chance to go home and see her for a bit last night too. She loves her "Da-eee!" Hopefully she's going to be able to come to the hospital to see me today. Even though my chest still hurts immensely, the support I'm getting from all of you, and knowing I'm winning this battle so far gives me the strength to continue fighting.

I love that Ben is staying here at the hospital with me – I know the couch/bed cannot be comfortable! And I love that my mom is at our house with Stella at night – she loves her Mimi and I think that helps keep her in a familiar routine, with her family around. Today is going to be a good day - I was told I might even get to shower! It's the little things that I'm appreciative of now. Still working on taking deep breaths - physically, and figuratively to get through this, but we seem to have my pain manageable now, and I think the worst is behind me. I have so much to live for and I'm determined to do just that. I've said this before and I'll say it again – please be aware of your body and get regular mammograms – if this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone! If I can prevent just one person from going through this nightmare, it will be worth telling my story a hundred times (now I know y’all don't want to hear this a hundred times so just go get checked out now!)

Karate....chop!

Today's update: This morning I had another appointment with the oncologist, Dr. M. She is so great! Today it was all positive news. She went over my lymph node results – and I saw the report with my own eyes – all negative! She reviewed my echocardiogram (also known as just an “echo”), which is the heart test that I took last week. It tested my LVEF (left ventricular ejection fraction), to measure the percentage of blood being pumped out into the body, during each heartbeat. It should be at least 50%, and mine was 65%, meaning I’m all ready for chemo as soon as I recover from tomorrow’s surgery – probably in about 2 ½ weeks. I told her to bring it on as soon as we can get started! She is going to give me a very aggressive schedule of chemo, which is because of how aggressive and fast growing my type of cancer is. The good news is that the more aggressive the cancer is, the better the chemo will work on it. It’s kind of like how in karate, you can take the enemy’s strength and use it against him. We are going to take cancer’s power and turn it right around on itself!

Science lesson of the day: I also met with the department at the hospital who did my genetic testing. They went over the BRCA2 gene that I have in detail, and explained what it meant to me. The BRCA2 gene functions as an “emergency brake” of sorts. It belongs to the tumor suppressor gene family. The proteins made by this gene are essential for repairing damaged DNA. Put simply, your body is making new cells all the time, by duplicating existing cells. If a cell has a flaw in it (i.e. a cell in the breast tissue), the BRCA2 gene comes along and acts as the emergency brake to stop it from duplicating, so that it doesn’t turn into enough cells to form a tumor. But in my body, the BRCA2 gene (which is made up of 84,188 DNA base pairs, the building material of chromosomes) is missing two tiny amino acids at position number 5,578. As a result of these mutations, the protein product of the BRCA2 gene is abnormal and does not function properly – which means cancer tumors can form. Pretty crazy that they can figure that out, just from me spitting in a cup!

What does that mean? In my lifetime, I have up to an 87% chance of getting breast cancer by having this gene – which is why I’m in this position now. And if I didn’t have a bilateral mastectomy, I would also have up to a 64% chance of getting a second primary breast cancer, unrelated to this first one. But now I will only have about a 1% chance – which proves to me that everything I’m about to go through will be worth it. Because of this gene, I also have a 27% chance of getting ovarian cancer in my lifetime, which means I will have to take some preventative steps in that department too, in the next few years. There are also other types of cancer I’m susceptible to, although these two are the most likely.

What’s next: Tomorrow morning is my next surgery. There will be about 7 surgeries total to get me through this – and this is #4 – the biggest one, a bilateral mastectomy and the first phase of reconstruction (expander implants). I am very nervous but excited to get the rest of these bad cells out of me! And I’ll be so glad to have this big step behind us. We have to be at the hospital at 5:30 am for my surgery that starts at 7:15. It will take about 4 hours, with 1-2 hours of recovery, then I have to stay in the hospital for 3 nights, or so they think. We will be negotiating – I think 2 nights will be plenty! If you want to visit, just text Ben or me for the room number – we’ll be in the Perot building at Presby. I know I will miss my baby girl but Ben has promised to bring her up there for a visit or two. A huge thank you to Ben for staying with me at the hospital, and to my mom for being in charge of Stella at the house – along with my brother, and all our other help! I could not get through all this without ALL of you. I feel so blessed for all the meals, flowers, cookies, gifts, cards, e-mails, calls, and texts you all have been sending. I just received a beautiful monogrammed blanket from my friend Tiffany K. to take with me to the hospital. And thank you, Dallas Moms Club, for the bags of goodies for both Stella and me – what a wonderful surprise! And I even got the nicest gift from Nicole, a friend of a friend whom I haven’t even met – a special pillow that wraps around me so that when I come home from the hospital, Stella can climb on her mommy without hurting the incisions or pulling the drains out. It’s amazing how a crisis like this brings out the most generous side of so many people. I am SO grateful.

I will update this blog as soon I am able to after surgery. Thank you all so much for your thoughts and prayers!

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!  

Surgery #3

Throughout this process, we’ve had good news and bad news, steps forward and steps back. Today was surgery #3 and it was a little of both. (Surgery #1 was the cyst/tumor removal in December. Surgery #2 was egg retrieval last week. Today was sentinel lymph node biopsy and port placement. #4 will be next Wed – double mastectomy/reconstruction.) This morning my mom arrived just before 8:00 this morning to watch Stelle Belle. Thank you Mimi! She also had her sister (Aunty Lucy) with her. Thank you for the flowers, dinner, and lunch you brought, A.L.! Together they were excited to spend the morning with our baby girl. Ben loaded up the car and drove us to Presby.  I’m still not sure I could ever get through this without him. He is my rock, the love of my life, and the one always there for me. He has been there for me through tears and anger and disbelief as we fight this together. I can only hope he knows how much I appreciate him.

So we got checked in and the people immediately started flowing through our room – the nurses who took my vitals, the chaplain who said a prayer, and two volunteers who gave me a pillow that a church had made for me to put under the seatbelt across my chest in the car. It is very strange to be on the receiving end of these two nice ladies, as I have volunteered in hospitals and through Junior League for so long. It’s humbling and strange to think I’m actually the one on the receiving end of these kind people offering their help. Then the anesthesiologist came in and started my IV, and Dr. B. was next. He asked the nurse to close the door on the way out, so I knew this was going to be serious. He told us he had finally gotten the results of my gene test. He said I am BRCA2 positive. That means I have one of the two genes that cause breast and ovarian cancer. My first thought was how horrible it is that there is now a 50% chance that Stella has gotten this gene from me. Of course we will always have her health monitored closely, but now there is a real chance that she could go through this too. There is also a 50% chance that she has NOT inherited this (thank you Ben!), so until she becomes at risk in her teenage years, and we can get her tested, we will continue to think positive. Knowing I have this gene somehow does help me understand why I have to go through all of this right now, at my age. There have been so many unanswered questions – what caused this? Why did cancer choose me to invade? What could I have done differently to prevent this? And now I know. Although it is horrible, knowing I have the gene definitely solidified that I am doing the right thing to choose a double mastectomy, the most aggressive course of chemo possible, and keep all the treatments moving forward as quickly as humanly possible. It also means that I may have to have a hysterectomy at some point, because of the likelihood I could get ovarian cancer. The challenges keep coming, and I will take them – but I will cross that bridge after I cross this one!

The surgery itself went smoothly. Dr. B. placed the port in my chest so I will be ready for chemo as soon as I recover from the next surgery. Then he used the radioactive dye that was injected yesterday to find the 4 sentinel lymph nodes, and removed them so they could be analyzed. The second piece of bad news (besides the BRCA gene) is that the first lymph node looks highly suspicious. We won’t know until the end of the week for sure, but the possibility exists that the cancer has spread to at least one node, meaning that I would be classified as stage II, and could need radiation on top of everything else. Ugh!! This is so scary to me that it could have spread farther than we thought, and I have been freaked out all day by it, but I will do anything I have to do – bring it on! Cancer has picked the wrong girl to mess with!

I want to make a special acknowledgement to my friend Ashley who came over to keep Stella today for several hours, so that my mom and aunt could come up to the hospital. We appreciated that so much! Not to mention the magazines and snacks she sent for the waiting room and me, and dinner she brought us tonight. She had signed up for the first night on our Care Calendar (tonight) - which brings me to another point - thank you infinitely to Leah and all of my Wednesday playgroup mom friends for setting that up for us - I love you Leah, Mandy, Trammell, Kelsey, Sarah, Mary, Lindsey, Angele, and Claudia! (And Stella loves your boys!) And thank you in advance to everyone who has signed up to help us with meals - I can't tell you how much that takes a load off of Ben and me to not have to worry about dinner at the end of these long days at the hospital.  Last but definitely not least, thank you to my sister Tracey for the beautiful flowers – can’t wait to see you and Caitlin next week! Ben and I are overwhelmed with the outpouring of love, prayers, e-mails, texts, calls, facebook messages, and blog comments – feeling the love from each one of you gives us the strength to fight this even harder! We are trying to get back to each of you as quickly as we can, but please know in the meantime that we read and listen to EVERY message you send and appreciate it so much.

One last note. One by one, I’ve been initiated into several clubs over the last few years. First it was IVF. I thought we were the only ones in the world to go through such a challenging time, then through one friend at a time I learned that there were so many others out there that had been through it too, and that made it easier. Then when my water broke and Stella was born 5 weeks early, she had to go to the NICU for nearly a month, and suddenly I was introduced to countless friends whose children have had to be in the NICU as well. And now I am beginning to meet friends of friends, and cousins of friends, who have “welcomed” me to the breast cancer club. I just want to say I hope this is the LAST club that I EVER get invited to. Don’t get me wrong, sharing experiences during these difficult times helps me so much. And luckily my experience with the first two clubs had happy endings, and Ben and I appreciate and love our daughter more than anything else in the world. (I have a sneaky suspicion that that we would appreciate and love her no matter what though! I’m just sayin….) I just hope and pray that she doesn’t remember anything about her Mommy being in the BC club, and she can grow up innocently, the way she deserves. But the point here is this….I hope I do not have to join any more clubs anytime soon!