aLive @ Stage 4!

Jimmy and I just hung up with my new pulmonologist.   We need to do tissue biopsies on both nodules (one in each lung).   The one on the right is not totally active, nor totally inactive.   It’s tricky to get to because it’s very posterior (in the back).   The one on the left is on the bottom near the diaphragm on the edge of my lung.   She said it can’t be biopsied by her method (under general anesthesia with a breathing tube and a camera down my throat).   She will speak with Interventional Radiology to see if they can biopsy one or both of them from the outside (like I had done when I was first diagnosed).  If they can’t do it, she can do the right one with the camera, but can’t reach the one of the left. This will be two different procedures.  We don’t want to risk collapsing both lungs at the same time. She will also speak with a thoracic surgeon about it. Treatm ent as usual until I hear any different. Note:  Y'all, I was going ...

Please forgive me for not updating the blog for about 2 1/2 years.  The short version is that I squeezed four years of college into two years, got my Bachelor's Degree, and went from Instructional Assistant (teacher's aide) to Special Education Teacher.  Huge move, I've been super busy teaching US History to high schoolers, and managing a case load (so far of about 8 students on average per year).  I write/update their IEP's, monitor their progress, and help them as needed.  It's amazing.   During the time I have been absent from my blog, I have been stable in the medical sense.  I have received treatment every three weeks, and had scans every three months.  All as been well until now. Possible Progression I had an appointment with my oncologist yesterday.  Actually I am between oncologists at the moment; I've been seeing a Nurse Practitioner, who is amazing.  During our appointment yesterday, an oncologist joined us.  We are concer...

I have not been keeping up with this blog lately because I have been super busy with school work (I'm in my last semester, due to graduate in December.  Woot woot!)  The following is a post I made on my personal Facebook page this evening.  I hope to start posting more here when my classes are finally done.   #𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 As Pinktober comes to a close this week, I hope that I have given you some more substantial awareness than the fact that breast cancer exists. It's not a pink frilly sorority; it's deadly. 1 out of 8 women will get breast cancer. Of those, 1 in 3 will become metastatic. 97%-99% of people (because men get breast cancer, too) whose cancer is metastatic will die from it. Where did I get my statistics? https://www.metavivor.org/.../metastatic-breast.../... . Remember -- Metastatic=StageIV=Terminal. As my last thought this October, I leave you with this:

"I don't know how you do it". Well, my friends, I'll tell you how I do it. I do it because I have no choice. Driving to and from treatment is completely draining, but I have no one to drive me. Jimmy can't driving anymore due to Parkinson's. One of my sons' work schedule is heavy and erratic. My other son lives four hours away. After seven years, no one else offers anymore. There's this misconception about cancer treatment that it's chemo/surgery/radiation for a few weeks and then it's done. But, us Stage IV patients are patients for life. Medicines have improved and are giving us longer lives, which means longer treatment times. I have treatment every three weeks, CT scans and echocardiograms every three months, and full-body bone scans every six months. This is the so called "new normal" of a stage IV cancer patient. To be quite honest, I would feel bad if someone did offer to drive me. I feel as though I would be wasting their time...

This is the sixth Thanksgiving since my metastatic breast cancer diagnosis.  The median life span of a metastatic breast cancer patient is approximately three years.  I am ever so grateful to be here still, and I am well aware of how incredibly lucky I am to have made it this long. Since my diagnosis, not only have I gone through chemo, surgery, and IV treatment every three weeks, I have visited the local emergency room as a patient quite a few times.  I have endured pain, nausea, and a myriad of other side effects.  Our family was forced to move out of our home of twenty-four years to a much smaller house because we needed a smaller mortgage.  Money is still so tight that I visit food pantries and hot meal distributions on a regular basis to help make ends meet.  I have a wonderful friend who brings us dinner the day after treatment day, and regularly brings a bag or two of groceries along with it.   Along with the hardships, some wonderful thing...

It is currently 10:45am Saturday morning.  I am finally awake enough for an update. Thursday went well enough, normal day at work and then when I got home; bedtime usual time (between 7pm-8pm).  I woke up just before midnight with severe abdominal pain, back pain, vomiting, and diarrhea.  This has happened twice before.  Not waiting it out this time, not waiting to see if it gets better on it's own like the last two times.  I checked into the local ER around 12:30am -- door to door is only about a quarter of a mile.  Long story short, I was there until about 7:30am with my friends Zofran and morphine.  I actually needed to have two doses of each throughout the night, which is a change from before.  Usually one dose of each worked like a charm, and immediately.  Morphine did not work immediately like it did the two previous times.  This is a little concerning because eventually my body will get used to/adjust to the pain meds and I'll nee...

Background: I saw a therapist after my terminal diagnosis. One thing that she said stuck with me. She told me that I am a wife, a mother, a sister, an aunt, a lover of books, a knitter, a teacher. Picture those and the many other aspects of myself riding on my bus. Right now (at the time of diagnosis and chemo) the cancer was driving the bus. Eventually the cancer will move to the back of the bus. Keep cancer at the back of the bus. I have been trying to do that since. I just realized that I have been living the past six years awaiting imminent death. I've been living with this pall of death hanging over my head since I received my terminal diagnosis. It really helped, what my Interventional Radiologist told me before he did my lung biopsy when I was being diagnosed, that my stage 4 was grouped with stage 4s who had two weeks or so to live, and that there needs to be [more of a breakdown -- can't remember his exact words] within the stages, and that I had many, many y...