Happy Dance

So I know it’s been a couple weeks since I have added to the blog and this will be lengthy so grab your beverage of choice and a snack.  I am glad to report that, no, I was not laid out in a hospital unable to communicate.  In fact quite the opposite.  On June 15th I went up to Spokane to get my second follow-up MRI (the first was in April).  My good friend Joz was kind enough to drive me and give Brent a break since it was just an up and back.  The results from that MRI were given to Brent and I via zoom with my radiology oncologist that Friday.  On the 22nd I had my PET scan.  The MRI looks just at the brain, and the PET scan looks at everything below the head. Since I had cancer on my lungs they wanted a scan to see if the cancer is reacting to the chemo and make sure there are no new spots that it migrated to.

But the reason you haven’t heard from me in 2 weeks is because I didn’t want to jinx myself by sharing the good news from the MRI before the PET scan.  Yes – I am getting oddly superstitious in my old age, some people find God, I find a lucky rabbit’s foot.

So drumroll please….The MRI came back good, all the lesions are shrinking and now it is just determining when I will do the Gamma Knife.  My radiology oncologist said there is a sweet spot between going in too early and having to zap a lot of stuff, or going in too late and it is now getting a foothold again.  So he is going to consult with a neurosurgeon and get his opinion based on my case.  The lesions are shrinking a little bit slower than they did at the follow-up scan back in April (my baseline was determined with my first MRI scan), but I was riding that wave of whole brain radiation (WRBT) and my doctor expected that the lesions would slow their progression to extinction the farther we got away from that treatment. So regardless of the speed they are shrinking, the fact that they are shrinking made me so relieved.  I was going in expecting a no change from last scan, or possibly even a reversal.  I had missed several chemo/immunotherapy treatments due to my multiple visits to the hospital. In addition I am getting headaches again and vertigo at times.  But I was just reading side effects on some of the drugs they pump into me.  Not surprisingly it included headaches, dizziness, lack of appetite, muscle weakness – pretty much everything I am experiencing. So as Brent tells me, quit stressing about something you can’t change right now, he’s right, but that didn’t help me sleep the night before our zoom appointment.

Now on to the PET scan.  So I had 2 large spots on my lungs that they were looking at initially and some small spots.  The PET came back clean – absolutely no evidence of cancer that they can detect.  My regular oncologist was beyond giddy.  She said that she hasn’t seen results like mine in a long time.  So I’m pretty much her star patient, lol.  Well other than those 2 times I got admitted to the hospital, that time where if I walked more than 10 feet I would be wheezing and needing to sit down, that time I face planted out of my car and likely gave myself the L1 compression fracture, and that time I knelt down to get something on a lower shelf and couldn’t get back up so Brent got to calling me turtle.

I still have a long road to go.  I’ll continue chemo treatments so this aggressive form of breast cancer doesn’t come back (again).  It could just be hiding in the weeds until we let up.  In addition it will take awhile for the brain to get back to where it needs to be, and that is where they have always had the most concern.  But this news is the best I could’ve ever dreamed of.  I hope that things continue to go in this direction and we see more of those lesions shrink or better yet just disappear.  So grab a rabbits foot and keep those positive thoughts coming.

When I was first diagnosed with this recurrence I told my doctors I don’t want to hear the term pallative care, I want treatment as I’m going to fight this.  I stated that I know this isn’t curative today, but my plan is to be around long enough for it to become curative.  Just the other week there was an announcement that a new therapy for rectal cancer had a 100% elimination/cure rate in the trial.  100%!!!!!! The article also stated that the genomes used to develop that treatment could also work for breast, colon and some other cancers.  So I’m hanging tough and fighting hard to make it to the point they have that cure.

So now I start to settle into a routine of treatments until at such time they schedule the Gamma Knife.  I have all of family, friends, co-workers to thank for where I am today.  Without that support system, and Brent staying by myside the whole time – I don’t think I would’ve kept my can do attitude up and I do believe that attitude does help (and the lucky rabbits foot).