My Story!

I was told I had cancer on Oct 9th, 2008.  My son was turning 21 a few days later and what a great present I had to give him. Thankfully that weekend we still ended up celebrating and cancer was forgotten for at least one day. The next few weeks after that were filled with doctor's visits and scans of my entire body to make sure the cancer hadn't spread, which at that time it hadn't.  I was told I had Her2 positive breast cancer, it wasn't hormonal, instead my body for some unknown reason was overexpressing the her2 protein and later in my treatment I was going to have a year of herceptin, a wonder drug used to keep my type of cancer at bay!  Yeah right, best laid plans not in my book! I was also told my cancer was locally advanced , the tumour was large (8cm) so I was to do chemotherapy first to shrink it prior to surgery.

So with the support of my great husband, wonderful friends and family I had my first chemo on Oct. 25th. I was to get 4 doses of adrianmycin and cytoxan followed by 4 doses of taxol.  All I can say is chemo is everything they say it is! I ended up having 3 days of hydration after my first dose due to the nausea and vomiting. Not only did I lose my hair, eyelashes and eyebrows, my toe nails fell off too! No more pedicures for me because they never did grow back normal.  I was never so glad to be over the chemo but I couldn't get too excited, surgery was scheduled a month after my chemo was done!

Surgery I have to say was a piece of cake! My surgeon was the best, I had opted for a bilateral masectomy, immediate reconstruction unfortuntely wasn't an option, but that was ok I just didn't want to go through this again!  At one point I did mourn my breasts, they weren't big but they did make my clothes look better and of course being bald and boobless does nothing for the self esteem!

Radiation was next, I was on the wrong side of the desk. I had worked in this department as a receptionist/booking clerk prior to this whole ordeal and now I was a patient!  Didn't like this one bit except for I had Dr. McDreamy as my radiation oncologist, thanks to my lovely coworkers who arranged for me to get him. So I started a series of 25 radiation treatments along with my first few doses of herceptin. After my third dose of herceptin and my 23rd radiation treatment I ended up hosptialized with a suspected blood clot due to severe shortness of breath. I ended up finishing my radiation but my medical oncologist discontinued my herceptin and instead spent 3 months on blood thinners! Like I said best laid plans....