aLive @ Stage 4!

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...