Faithfully Fighting

I had a good meeting with my doctor yesterday.  I am torn about how much information you guys really want to have, but here goes.  The new diagnosis is officially Stage IV Metastastic Breast Cancer.  He said our new goals are quantity and quality of life.  I will be finishing up the IV Antibiotics on Sunday (by the way the infection really looks all cleared up).  Next Tuesday I have a minor surgery to put in my medi-port for easier IVs.  Next Thursday I will have another chemo treatment.  My treatment is changing.  I will be getting the chemo drug Taxol as well as the biologic response modifier Herceptin.  These drugs work together to suppress the cancer.  Herceptin is relatively new, but has shown excellent suppression in Her-2 positive cancers, which mine is.   I will get the chemo every week for 12 weeks.  I will have another CT scan in about 2 months to see how the liver spots are responding.  We will pray for shrinking or disappearing (that would be a wonderful miracle).

Questions some people have asked me:

Surgery:  They cannot do surgery on the liver.  It isn’t possible because there are 5 spot  (the largest being 2cm-pretty small) and they are in different lobes.

Second Opinion:  My doctor is very happy for me to get a second opinion on my treatment options.  He even volunteered to call Johns Hopkins and set it up for me. He doesn’t think it will change anything but he often happily works with other major oncology hospitals on treatments for local residence.  He told me to just give him the word.  I on the other hand don’t really feel like traipsing all over the place to get similar, or the same information I’m getting from my doctor.  I feel confident in his knowledge, even though he’s only been in this practice 5 years he did his residency at the Mayo Clinic.  He is going to Hopkins next weekend to a Breast Cancer symposium, 2 months ago he was in California meeting with the top oncologists in the field of Breast Cancer (I know that because he called to check on me after my surgery before he left).  He isn’t a one way guy, he talks about lots of choices and if this doesn’t respond we’ll do this.  I’m comfortable with him right now, if that changes I’ll let you know.

I’m sorry I’m not funny or upbeat today.  I will confess that the last two weeks have been hard on me and I am weary.  The Lord is good and his words comfort me, but when we are together in prayer I sometimes express my frustrations to Him.  My earthly self is angry and confused and although I try to separate myself from that and look to the Lord, I haven’t always succeeded this week.  His plan is elusive to me right now and I am trying to move past my selfishness to walk in His way, but failing miserably at this moment.

Hopefully this will be a marathon, not a sprint and I will reach my comfortable stride.  I think it is just because of the infection throwing in the curve and my daily trips to the hospital without a break that I’m feeling overwhelmed.  Once the treatment and real life starts to settle into a pattern I think my emotional responses will settle too.   I miss Katie here for more than 2 hours, I miss church, I miss work, and I miss going through the day without looking through a benadryl haze. 

Wow, this is a depressing blog.  I’m so sorry!!  I’ll stop writing now.

God Bless,

Lynn

For some reason the last post is not allowing comments to be posted, so I'm trying this test post to see if it works.  If you would like to post comments to the Liver Word please try them at this post.

 I will be submitting an update on treatment information either this afternoon or tomorrow.  I meet with my doctor later this morning.

 Love to All!  Lynn

Well, I saw my plastic surgeon yesterday.  He called me his problem child!  I told him I was fine until everyone started poking at me.  He told me he was continuing the IV antibiotic therapy until Monday, then we would have to see if the infection returned.  It’s looking really good right now, so hopefully it will be gone for good.

Yesterday, during my IV treatment, my oncologist came up to me with my liver biopsy results.  I have a new diagnosis, Metastatic breast cancer.  That means the spots they found on the liver were cancer.  I have an appointment with my doctor on Thursday to go over details of the new treatment regiment.  Our conversation yesterday mostly consisted of a pep talk.  I could tell he doesn’t want me to get down.  I’ve got a bit of a battle ahead of me and he wanted me to understand that we are moving forward aggressively attacking the cancer.  What this really means is that the word “cure” probably won’t be coming up again.  We will be hunting for “remission”.  I’ll get more details on Thursday.  He did talk about another patient he has, similar in age to me, and other factors (he mentioned her having school age children, and similar “religious” views-his words) with almost identical diagnosis, that he would like to introduce me to.  He thought we would be a good support system for each other, in addition to our current friends and family.  He had already talked to her and she was willing, so he wants me to thing about that.  I thought that was very thoughtful of him.

So, in the meantime, I’m still hooking up to IVs every day and starting to feel like a pin cushion.  I am talking to the surgeon today about getting a Medi-port (that’s a semi-permanent port under the skin for them to take blood and attach IVs without poking veins).  I won’t have chemo this week as previously scheduled, but will probably start my new regiment next week.  I’m hoping to get back to work some next week too.  This every day to the hospital is making me feel sicker than I am.  I’ll update everyone after my appointment on Thursday.  Thanks for the prayers, keep up the work, Love you guys.

I have a specific prayer request for this evening for anyone reading the blog.  I have been dealing with an infection with daily IV treatments that will continue until next week.  During a CT scan of the area some spots were seen on my liver.  A more indebth CT scan showed 5 spots of a suspicious nature.  I am scheduled for a liver biopsy tomorrow morning at 10:00 am.

 My doctor indicated these spots could very well be cancer that has mastastisized from the breast, and if true my prognosis will change dramatically.  He is optomistic that it can still be treated, but not cured.  He said that the CT read is almost always right, but they need the biopsy to confirm. 

 I believe the Lord doesn't have to agree with the usual statistics.  I believe in prayer and in healing.  I know sometimes the Lord's will is not that direction, but that does not mean we should not intercede.  I, over and over again, felt the power of our Lord reach his arms to me through His people's prayers and have seen it in other's lives.  I hope it is not presumptuous on my part to ask again for intervention on your part.  Please pray for my test tomorrow morning.  Pray that if it is in His will these spots will not be cancer.

 God Bless you and Thank you

Lynn

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