The walk through the dark fire is OVER!  My 6th and final chemotherapy treatment was Thursday, September 8th.  I cannot express how grateful I am to have come through the darkness of cancer to see the light of the future for me.  A close friend of mind talked about the light at the end of the tunnel and to keep your eye focused on it.  He was right.

I must admit that I am emotional about the chemo process ending and moving forward.  I know that I still have to go through some very dark days for the next week, as that is the process with chemo.  In about a week I should be building up my strength again, getting my strong mental abilities back. Hopefully the chemo brain will not last that long.

Although the chemotherapy is over, the nine (9) months of Herceptin maintenance begins.  I have a very aggressive form of breast cancer called HER2-positive.  Because of this I will receive infusions of Herceptin every three (3) weeks for the next nine months.  Here’s a little history on Herceptin and how it is helping women with HER2-positive cancer. 

Herceptin in Early-Stage and Advanced Breast Cancer Herceptin® (trastuzumab) was the first targeted medicine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designed to treat human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive breast cancer, a more aggressive form of the disease.

In September 1998, Herceptin was approved in combination with chemotherapy (paclitaxel) for treatment of women who had not received previous medicines for their advanced (metastatic) HER2-positive breast cancer (first-line treatment). It was also approved as a medicine to be used alone for women who had received prior chemotherapy (second- and third-line treatment).¹

In November 2006, Herceptin was approved for treating early-stage (adjuvant) HER2-positive breast cancer when given with chemotherapy (doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide and paclitaxel), a combination called AC-TH. In January 2008, it was also approved as a stand-alone medicine following anthracycline-based chemotherapy.  In May 2008, Herceptin and chemotherapy (docetaxel and carboplatin), known as TCH, was approved. This treatment regimen has been associated with a lower risk of heart damage when compared to other combinations of Herceptin and chemotherapy.  Another AC-TH combination, comprised of Herceptin, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide and docetaxel, was also approved in May 2008.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women in the United States. Approximately 15-30 percent of breast cancers are HER2-positive.  Just my luck to get this!

I don’t know if I will ever be able to completely thank all of my friends, colleauges and closest family members enough for supporting me every step of the way through this horrific experience.  I have had tremendously skilled physician’s save my life and put me back together after the horrific attack my body received.

This has been a most humbling experience for me.  It has also been a very liberating one.  I always wondered what I would look like bald.  I have wondered about that for years.  I think I carried it off pretty well.  I never wore a wig and I will sport cool hats when I return to work.  My bald head with little hair growth is my badge of courage and I will wear it with pride.  I also wondered what it would be like to be a married woman and have to have a double mastectomy.  I used to wonder what kind of impact that would have on a couple.  Oddly enough my curiosity was answered when I got cancer.   We have not let it change us too much.  Reconstruction opportunities are amazing and my good friend and plastic surgeon Jay Orringer, M.D. www.drorringer.com is the master of reconstruction and he is going to help me.  We owe Jay a lot.  He has been there 150% from the moment he sent me to my breast specialist in January to just last night when he called to check on me.  Through everything he has held my hand and walked me through the fire.  I will always love him for this.

Cancer is a life changing experience that I would wish on no one.  Chemotherapy in my opinion is right up there with water-boarding (torture).  I am glad that I am done with the chemo.  Now I have faced one of my greatest fears and I have won the battle.  I did not kick cancer’s ass.  It truly kicked my ass and it ripped my body in half.  I will never say that I kicked it’s ass.  I will politely bow down to it and acknowledge it for its power.  I went through the battle and succeeded at finishing the race.

I know that everyone who knows and loves me is glad that this is over and is excited that I can start really living again. 

This is WINNING.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am reposting this blog entry today (from March 30, 2011) because it is one of my favorites.  If all goes well for me, I will get my final chemo treatment tomorrow and be on the road to recovery.  Hair is starting to grow – even the grey ones!  This is fantastic news to me.  I hope you enjoy this entry today.  Thank you to all of my friends and readers for supporting me through this gastly journey with breast cancer.

I have lived my life knowing that there was always going to be more to it tomorrow than there was today.  I have lived on this earth for close to 42 years now and I realize that if you are not paying attention, life can pass you by -quickly.  I am at home recovering well from  my 15 hour DIEP FLAP breast reconstruction surgery.  I had a platinum team of doctors and professionals working with me through this journey.  I feel that I must pay respect to each and every one of them.  The following professionals saved my life, cared about me as an individual and kept me calm, cool and collected through the entire experience and for that I will be ever so grateful.

 Shadiar Ohadi, M.D. – my family doctor  

Jay Orringer, M.D. – my plastic reconstruction surgeon – www.drorringer.com

Kristi Funk, M.D. – my breast surgeon and speciailist   – www.pinklotusbreastcenter.com

Jay Granzow, M.D.- my plastic micro-surgeon.  – www.plasticsurgery.la

I was blessed to have found the lump on my own.  By alerting the doctors immediately, they were able to move swiftly and strategically to ensure that the cancer was removed quickly and that I would be a survivor of breast cancer.  The final part of this journey will be the one that frightens me the most – chemo.  Chemo scares me because I have never been through it and, let’s be really honest here, I am upset about losing my beautiful head of hair.  The upside to this is that during the time of my chemo and for a period after, I will carry the recognizable image of Cancer.  This will only assist me in promoting education to the people I am surrounded by each and every day.  If someone wants to ask me a question, they should know that it is okay to ask.  I was born to be a communicator, advisor and protector.  What better subject to communicate and educate on than breast cancer?  This is not to say that all other cancers are of deserving education on…I am just doing what just got dealt to me! LOL.  

Knowledge is power.  I want to educate people about my experience with Breast Cancer.  By doing this, I feel that I am playing the hand that I was dealt, and playing it quite well, with the complete intention of WINNING.  I have been dealt a few hands in my life that others would have not bounced back from so easily.   I look at life in a very realistic and grounded way.  Everything happens for a reason! 

This is one of my life lessons.  I honor that it was given to me to deal with.  I cannot imagine this happening to my sister.  Now, instead, she is living through it with me.  I welcome anyone who wants to live through it with me to do just that.

I do feel compelled to share this one story.  If I don’t document it in my blog, I will forever be telling the story to people and I don’t want to have to keep telling the story so, here goes….

The insurance carrier had assigned a case manager to me for my chemotherapy that will start in a month.  For use of the Blog and to protect the guilty, I will refer to the case manager as Cindy.  Cindy contacted me a few days before my last surgery.  She introduced herself, explained her function in the process and we got to know each other a little bit.  I am the kind of person who will quickly become familiar with strangers who I will be working with on a project.  During our first conversation I interpreted Cindy to be a professional and caring individual who had been working with the insurance carrier for many years. 

Not so fast…..I was contacted by Cindy again the day before I was to go in for surgery.  She expressed to me that in no way would she have the operation that I was about to have and she was asking me why I was putting my body through this kind of torture.  I explained that my skin had not survived after the double mastectomy and that this was our only option.  She then told me that the operation is dangerous and I that I would have a very difficult recovery.  I explained to her that I had been advised by my doctors that this was not a painful surgery. I would survive. I would heal very well and aesthetically the results would be phenomenal.  She again told me that I was going to be in an extreme amount of pain.  She was stating this based on diagnosis codes that were listed in front of her.  I explained that my muscles were not being touched, therefore the recovering and pain would be minimal.  She told me that my doctor’s had not been telling me the truth about the procedure they were going to do on me.  These repeated statements made me for the FIRST time in my life fear surgery.  Surgery has always been easy for me.  Doctor’s have always been amazed at the way my body springs back.  This woman scared me senseless.  I was crying uncontrollably.  I was beginning to believe the things she had said.   About 3 hours later, she calls me back and says “I have spoken with your doctors and you should go ahead and have the surgery”.  Talk about going from one end of the spectrum to the other!

I had the 12 hour surgery that was extended to 15 hours.  This surgery generally requires a blood transfusion.  I did not have to have one.  I came out of anesthesia right away, alert and would not shut up.  I spent one day in the Intensive Care Unit where the nurses could not believe how alert and mobile I was able to be.  I was then moved to a regular room for the duration of my stay and observation.  The doctors and the nurses were shocked at how my body came back and latched on to the skin grafts.  They were amazed at my uncontrollable ability to make jokes about everything and to laugh through it.  Because of the way I was healing and the positive attitude I had, my physician’s released me a day early!  I came home rested for the weekend and then got a call from Cindy the Case Manager.

NOW HOLD UP AND WAIT JUST ONE MINUTE!  

Cindy called me to follow up on when I came home and how I was doing.  I answered her questions and then told her that I need to say something to her.  I do not think she had any idea what was about to happen to her.  With all the anger and energy I had, I explained to her that I am a person who has had multiple major surgeries and I have never been afraid of them…ever.   Then I started yelling at her and had a hard time controlling myself.  I explained to her that she was going to have to listen to everything I had to say to her.  She had no right to tell me whether to have a surgery or not.  Whether it came from a good “motherly” place of advice or if it came from the place of the ugly bureaucratic insurance industry.   Either way, I did not care.  What she did was wrong and unacceptable.  I continued to yell at her and gave her this analogy – “You have no idea who you are dealing with.  I am a prize-winning thoroughbred race horse.  You told me that I could not finish the race.  You told me I shouldn’t even be in the race.  YOU TOLD ME NOT TO ENTER THE GATE!”  No one tells me that I can’t accomplish something that I put my mind to”.  I explained to this 62 something year old woman that she was going to learn from this horrible experience and hopefully she will never do anything like that to any one ever again.  I demanded that she find me a replacement Case Manager.  I explained that her actions had violated my trust.  Because my trust was violated, she was off the team.  I instructed her to find a replacement GOLD STANDARD Case Manager, otherwise I would come after her with a vengeance.  Within 20 minutes I received a call from a much senior Case Manager and now we are moving forward.

I will be writing a letter to the insurance carrier about this matter.  My understanding in talking with professionals in the health care industry is that this may have been a ploy to get me not to have the surgery at all. 

On another note – this experience has changed me.  It has definitely been one of those life changing experiences that makes you value and appreciate everything you have in your life.  Even though I call my husband crazy and this website was originally produced to expose his craziness, I seriously would have been lost without him through all of this.  I love that man more than anything and I am so grateful I said “yes” to marrying him when he asked me on our second date and then “I do” ten (10) days after the second date. 

Life is amazing.  Take chances.  Take a leap of faith.  It just might surprise you.

Four years ago today my crazy and adored husband Jason and I boarded a small boat with a captain and a skipper and sailed to Emerald Bay in Lake Tahoe.  Wearing jeans, white hoodies and baseball caps we took a hike and were married by the captain of the boat.  Call it a “leap of faith marriage” as we had only known each other for 13 days!

Together we have experienced a lot in the past 4 short years.  We experienced the death of a cherished Mother, the birth of a beloved Daughter, the vicious face of breast cancer and all of its glory and the growing pains of a sudden marriage.  Most of all and above everything we have experienced love.  Some people live their whole lives searching for this experience.  Love comes with hills and valleys that is for sure.  Only the strong survive.

Today I woke up not thinking about cancer or chemotherapy.  I woke up knowing that it was my 4 year marriage anniversary.  The only gift I was hoping for was a 4 year anniversary pin from Hard Rock Lake Tahoe.  Like clockwork I woke up and had a cup of coffee handed to me along with my pin!  Today will be a good day and the coming year will bring us a lot more of life’s experiences.  Hopefully we have experienced so much craziness this past year that we will sail through the coming year.

Thank you Jason for abruptly asking me to be your wife and for sharing your life with me and my children.

This past Thursday, September 1st was to be my 6th and final chemotherapy treatment.  I have been excited about this but there was always this l voice inside me that said I was going to need another transfusion before I could get my final chemo.  My hemoglobin was 6.   Generally oncologists will not give a patient chemotherapy when they are below 9.  I wasn’t upset, I just accepted it.  I had to have 3 units of blood.  The best part about today was getting to sleep the enture time the blood was being transfused.

This little bump in the road buys me some healing time for my abdominal wound.  That is very clean and thriving.  I will more than likely have to get a skin graft to close the wound completely. 

I guess I could look at the recent bumps in the road as really good timing for me with my children.  Since chemo has been pushed back almost a week that will give me more time to heal.   I have been so quiet over the past two weeks.  For some reason this last chemo session really took its toll on me.

Oddly enough I believe that my hair is beginning to grow back. I have peach fuzz all over my head and my fingernails have been growing quite well.  I feel like I am at the last leg of the race and all I need is a little coaxing to finish. 

I am ever so grateful to my husband who has been running alongside me with this battle since February 2011.  Jason and I were always very close but this with breast cancer has bonded us forever.  We will celebrate our 4 year anniversary of marriage.  In a lot of ways we are very lucky to have each other and all of our friends who have been supporting us through this adventure.

I am seriously looking forward to getting my last treatment.  Next Wednesday cannot come soon enough!!!!