3 of 10 days of radiation are complete. I’m pretty tired, but I’m not sure it’s because of radiation. There’s just too much going on and I’m struggling to keep up, even with not doing any cooking or cleaning. I’m sure this triggers a “what can I do to help” thought from many friends and family, which I love…but I can’t pass off parenting, appointments with kids and choir concerts.

Both appointments went well today. I have a plan to help combat possible side effects for the course of treatment we are leaning towards. Still have to make that final decision after the biopsy results though.

I ran into my oncologist in the hospital today while visiting someone from church. 🙂 Got to chat with him for a few minutes. Once we have the biopsy results, we’ll let him know which course of treatment we want to go with and then he’ll get it ordered. He says it takes about 2 weeks to get insurance approval and to get it shipped to me, but that we wouldn’t start it during radiation anyways. So that works out well.

I am still awaiting answers on the biopsy, but I did hear from radiation today and will be going to radiation practice 🙂 tomorrow at 1:45.

I also have an appointment at 10 up in Ballard (ugh) with my Nautropath to begin to talk about how to best get my body ready for treatment and what we can do to ease the side effects as much as possible.

The girls got off to school and zero hour pretty well this morning. I’m thankful for that. I never know how mornings are going to go…

My infusion was uneventful. I got to catch up with Toni, my nurse, this morning, which is always fun. I did find out the Dr. ordered a couple extra cancer tumor marker blood tests, so I’m curious how those will come back. In the past, even with all the large tumors in my breast, the number was low and hardly changed any.

Tomorrow is crazy!

Tom and I met with both the radiation oncologist and the oncologist today. The bone scan confirmed there is active cancer in quite a few bones, but only two of them are causing pain right now – my sternum and back (T9).

The current plan is to have two weeks of radiation to target the broken vertebrae in my back as that will give the quickest pain relief. Hopefully this will relieve some of the pain in my ribs when I breathe as well. Ladies, you know the pain of breathing when you are 9 months pregnant? That’s the best way to describe it right now….except I’m not 9 months pregnant. 🙂

Then we have two treatment options to target everything else. The first one is a chemo pill, with similar side effects to IV chemo, but less severe. The biggest side effects being diarrhea, hand-foot syndrome and fatigue. The other option is a lower dose chemo pill and either the hormone blocking pill that I have taken and hated in the past, or the hormone blocking pill can be substituted for a shot that does the same thing….we assume my body will respond the same way it has to all 4 pills with bone pain, but that is unknown.

I was planning on waiting to share all this after we meet with the oncologists on Friday, but this is just too hard. We have been slowly telling people as needed, but I’ll be honest, I feel like we are falling apart. None of us know what to do. I apologize if you are reading this and I’m not telling you in person, but there were multiple spots on my spine, hips and possibly my sternum on my CT scan, meaning the cancer has returned. I’m reaching out for help as needed, but there’s not a lot any of us can do right now and it’s just hard.

Insurance finally approved the bone scan and it is scheduled for October 10th. They said that because of the hurricane on the east coast, there was a shortage of the medicine they use for the test, so they had to reschedule a bunch of them, making that appointment the first available. I love waiting. 🙂

insurance denied the pet scan until other imaging is done to show that it is medically necessary. My oncologist ordered a CT scan and a bone scan. The CT scan has been approved and is scheduled for this Monday at 10. Still waiting on the approval of the bone scan.

Since my original diagnosis was in the fall of 2015, this time of year there tends to be lots of appointments and scans. There is my follow up with the oncologist, the mammogram, bone density test and PET Scan or CT Scan. This year, I’ve added in a few more because I love them so much. I’ll also be seeing an orthopedic Dr. and visiting the radiation oncologist again. More on that below…