Six and Seventh Week of Treatment - 9/24/24

Posting another update this week and covering my 6th week (last week) and 7th week of treatment.  I completed my 2nd round of treatment this last week which includes Taxol, Herceptin and Perjeta, also called Taxane, Trastuzumab and Pertuzumab.  On Monday I started my third round of treatment.  I am now fully in the weeds of chemotherapy and this routine is becoming more a normal part of my life.  There were so many positives and wins recently that I am excited to share with you all.

Starting with last week, my mom took me to my 6th week of treatment.  Again we did the lab tests, tolerance to treatment and everything checked out fine.  My white blood cells were in normal range but red blood cells continue to decrease.  That is normal given chemo treatment will suppress your bone marrow, leading to a reduction in red blood cells.  I received treatment well and off we went on another recovery week. 

Although while my body IS recovering every week, healing and kicking the crap out of these cancer cells, I am not letting chemo get me down from life!  This past week was strange, but in a good way. I feel like I had more energy this past week than in the previous weeks.  While I wouldn’t say I have no side effects, the effects have just been more minimal this week.   I’ve been able to get out and do things I love with my mom and friends, which has made my life feel a little more back to normal.  On Sunday I put my new infrared sauna together and went to a friend’s birthday party.  During the week I played disc golf, went out to try and win $2,000 playing bingo (didn’t win or I may have started with that 😉!), went out to lunch with my best friend, did yoga in the park, played pickleball and watched the Vikings win yet another groundbreaking game this season.  My mom and I have also found a couple new good shows to binge watch, found a YouTube weightlifting workout to do together, and made it a nightly routine of ours to do some puzzling before bed.  I am so grateful just to be able to do all these things, plus having the energy to do them is a bonus.  I know not everyone feels good enough to continue to do the things they enjoy during treatment and that just pains me to think about.  It is hard enough having an incurable illness to deal with, let alone having to suffer the effects from ongoing treatment to continue to survive. 

Physically I am feeling pretty good.  As we are more weeks in, mentally I am becoming more aware of the situation I am in, how life-changing this really is.  Mentally I continue to stay positive and believe that I will overcome this, that I will be healed.  Lately I have been listening to podcasts and audiobooks of radical remission stories, for those that lived after overcoming statistical odds.  Most of these stories remind me that mindset is half the battle, that having the belief you will heal is a huge component of healing itself.  Couple that with healthy eating, reducing stress and minimizing toxins and you have a recipe that can take you far with conventional medicine.  I’ve been focusing on all these things, to give me the best chance of survival for years to come.  Also, recently and maybe weirdly in my own way, I’ve been working on visualization techniques with my breathwork each day and I guess you could say making “light” of the tumors themselves.  I think of them as just crazy monkeys that have come to hang out for a while, but they don’t know what is right and wrong.  Every day I picture these trainers going to each of my tumors and working with the monkeys to get them to leave, as they are not welcome here. Little by little they will all be gone.  You know, kind of like the “Monkey Mind” for anxiety, but for cancer! Just an idea that I conjured up that seems to work for me haha.

This week I also recently learned of the site called Pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov which is the National Library of Medicine, which publishes trusted articles on everything medicine.  I want to stay well informed on HER2+ treatment options, etc., to follow along with my doctor.  This stuff is interesting to me to read and stay informed on the latest and greatest advancements in medicine.  I am like a kid in a candy store!  I understand there are many new treatments for this type of breast cancer with additional lines of treatment.  I hear of the positive stories on social media from others who are No Evidence of Disease (NED) for years after receiving the treatment I am on.  I am positive that I will also be one of those people too.

As far as other wins this week, I met back with Dr. Lassi just yesterday to check in before my treatment and we reviewed another set of blood work to determine if treatment is working or not.  I am happy to share that my liver enzymes went down again!  AST is now 40 (54 previously) and in normal range and ALT is now 66 (83 previously).  This was great news!  Another big win was looking at the Cancer Antigen 15-3, which measures the amount of breast cancer cell protein in your blood and tells you how much cancer you may have in your body.  Normal ranges are below 25.  I started at 727 on 8/7 and now it measured at 122! (funny because 22 is my favorite number).  This was such satisfying news which means the tumors are shrinking.  Maybe this is why I have more energy lately, since the amount of cancer is shrinking in my body. I get my PET Scan on 10/14 which will confirm by how much, but I am very hopeful.  I also brought up the brain again to my doctor as this will always be my concern and she said we could do a brain MRI every 3 months for piece of mind if I wanted to. So, I will be getting a PET Scan and a Brain MRI to just confirm everything still looks good there in Oct.   We are taking the wins when we get them, and I am one step closer to NED. 

While NED is my goal for a long time, I am also letting myself feel the realities of a stage 4 cancer.  My doctor still would say the prognosis is median 5 years as the cancer cells get smart over time.  Of course I choose to believe that is not my fate, and there is world where I can both believe I will be healed, while also feeling the realities of the situation.  As I mentioned in previous posts, I don’t fully think I have processed the news, however, there has been grief settling in.  Most of my grief has been on the family side.  I unfortunately will not be able to have biological children after chemo.  Not that I thought I would have them for sure, since I am not even married, let alone have a significant other, but just giving that up fully has been quite hard.  My life isn’t normal and will continue to be a forever fight for my life.  Hard questions come up for me as things continue to progress include, how do I even date in the future? Will anyone even want to date someone with stage 4 cancer?  I’ve been through a lot of traumas in the last 5 years or so that I am working through and need to heal from to heal forever.  My two biggest fears in life are dying and dying alone.  I know I am never alone with the abundance of family and friends, but to have a partner by your side and kids that bring you joy is a game changer.  Every person I hear from with MBC is either married or has kids or both.  I have yet to meet someone that is single and has no kids.  These are things I’ve been wrestling with mentally.  I have too much of my life to yet live and too young for this disease!

I tell myself that this is all normal to feel and there are others out there in a similar situation.  While I feel this way, I am also feeling very grateful for what I do have, day in and day out.  I am LIVING and have SO many people who love me, care for me and are by my side through this.  The light from everyone helps cover some of the darkness I feel.  I am truly forever grateful. 

Looking ahead, this week my aunt and a few of my cousins are coming to visit from Michigan.  I am so excited to see them and spend quality time together!  There are also some breast cancer walks coming up in October that I am looking forward to with friends and family and the Masquerade Gala with my dad that will be a really nice event.  My mom and I went dress shopping this week and bought a beautiful dress that I can’t wait to wear!

Lastly, sharing some final thoughts as we approach October, which is breast cancer awareness month.  October to me years prior was just October.  Today, this month means so much more than that.  It means bringing awareness to this awful disease, it means awareness for prevention, for life saving treatment and most importantly, for those women and others affected, to share their stories.  It is so important to bring awareness to the lives this is impacting, because we all could learn a thing or two. I know I can, and I know together we are stronger. 

Love, Stacy