A Celebration!

          I wanted to give an update that there is much to celebrate!

I found out that I do not need to have any radiation!  This was a huge weight that has now been lifted off our shoulders.  The radiation specialist explained that with certain types of cancers radiation can help reduce the risk that the cancer will begin to re-grow on the chest wall.  It turns out that with my specific type of cancer radiation would neither help nor hurt my chances of the cancer coming back, so it would be needless treatment for me.  I guess in one way I could have hoped to learn that radiation would reduce my risk of a recurrence, but I am honestly just happy to know it would have no effect and to cut it out altogether.  In one appointment we avoided six additional weeks of treatment, pain, discomfort, fatigue, daily appointments and some very serious internal and external permanent side effects.  When the doctor gave his decision, I literally exclaimed, clapped and almost started crying I was so relieved!

Today is my last day of steroids!  While I have developed an intense love/hate relationship with steroids I am excited to see them go.  I am thankful that they have allowed me to manage this chemotherapy with more ease.  Taking them has offered me some good days over the past three months that I otherwise would not have experienced.  But I will not miss the sleepless nights.  I will not miss the wild food cravings.  I will not miss the frantic steroid energy that cannot be calmed.  I will not miss the swelling.  It takes six months for steroids to work out of your system, but slowly the side effects should start to fade.  My oncologist says the swelling will go down over the next four to six weeks and the other side effects will wan as time passes.

Yesterday was my last chemo treatment!  I’m not sure the knowledge of this has actually hit me yet.  I think I will be able to grasp it more firmly once I come through the side effects of this batch, but I am so very excited to know that next Thursday morning Adam and I will not be driving to the cancer center.  Next Thursday morning I will not be drawing blood.  Next Thursday I will not be hooked up to any poisonous chemicals.  Wow.  All I can say is wow.  It’s been since April 1^st that I could say, “I have no chemotherapy in my known future.”  It feels both of yesterday and years ago. 

It was a sweet and exciting appointment with also a hint of sadness.  Everyone was so happy for us.  The nurses signed a card and brought me cookies.  The patients that traditionally share our Thursday morning appointment remembered that it was my last day and offered their warmest congratulations and well wishes.  I’ve really enjoyed getting to know my chemo nurse, and I have a nurse friend who works for an oncologist in the same building so I will miss seeing them on Thursdays, but I think I could find a better situation in which to share their company.

Really, the hardest part was saying goodbye to another particular patient and only because I could not find the right words and so I left things feeling less than settled.  She is a woman who had breast cancer and now is going through cancer all over again.  Her diagnosis is that she will not beat the cancer and she is taking chemotherapy to buy her some more time.  It was an awkward interaction at best despite the genuine feelings of warmth, care and compassion we have for each other’s situation.  Her wishing me the rest of my life to be cancer free, and me knowing the she will never again have the same experience of walking out of that room with treatments done and hope for a future.  I will not be able to describe this experience well enough here and now.  I think perhaps it touches on too many feelings and thoughts that have not fully processed, so I’m going to leave it at that. 

But in the end, as I signed my chemo nurses “completed chemo” book and walked down the long hallway I felt as if I was graduating.  In a way I was.  I have finished something that has brought me more knowledge and education and truth than any classroom has.

I still need to have my ovaries removed and my port-a-cath removed.  These are two things I should be finding more out about on my next oncologist appointment on the 10th, but I’m hoping to get those completed as soon as possible…and then?  Then we celebrate some more. 

Thank you all so much for everything you have done to help us get this far.  And thank you for celebrating these milestones with us!