The Last to Know

 

I had round 3 of AC today, which is hopefully doing a tornado kick all over any remaining cancer cells. I wore my new Eagle Fang shirt to give it a boost. (Hashbrown strike first. Hashbrown kick ass. Hashbrown dead meat. Hashbrown Eagle Fang Forever….)

I already have side effects, which was not the case with the first 2 rounds, so I’m a little worried about how bad this one is going to be. I have pressure in my eyes, my stomach hurts, and I’m already exhausted. Maybe some of that is because it has already been a difficult week, but I don’t know.

I’ve been having some pain in a very low part of my spine. I know it’s my spine and not just my “low back” because I’ve had burning, tingling, and itching in my low back and sometimes in my right leg, which means there is nerve involvement. I’ve had neck pain for years, but the lumbar spine pain is fairly new. I’ve been worried because breast cancer likes to metastasize to bones- the spine being a popular choice.

Dr. Joyce is not overly worried. She said that tumors in the spine typically cause constant pain- not intermittent, and it’s usually pretty intense. I’ve only had particularly bad pain with it once, and it mostly just comes and goes with low level pain. But she agreed that it’s a reasonable idea to get it checked out. It is causing some problems, regardless of what it is, and MRI will give us a better idea of whether I might have arthritis, a pinched nerve, a disc problem, etc., or, of course, a tumor. I decided I would like to make sure/see what’s going on, so she’s going to set it up. She did not feel it was NECESSARY to have an MRI, but said it was a simple test that could tell us what’s going on if I WANT to do so. I want all of the information, whatever it is, so I asked her to go ahead. Regardless, while a spinal tumor would suck and would put me at stage 4, the current regimen is the first treatment that I would receive for that, so I’m on the right path no matter what. Doing it now is also good because I only have one infusion left of AC and then I switch to Taxol. That drug is usually much more well tolerated than the AC. HOWEVER, the main side effect with it is bone pain, so we want to get it checked now before that medicine (poison…) exacerbates things and confuses what the symptoms actually  are.

She said I’m doing very well, in spite of having random, weird side effects that nobody’s ever heard of. 😆 She is also going to arrange for me to meet with the radiation oncologist sooner than planned. I don’t know what his plan will be because I first saw him before we knew about the additional tumor, the lymph node involvement, or the mastectomy. Knowing my radiation plan will give my plastic surgeon a better idea of what to expect for my implant exchange as well as what kind of complications he may expect to be dealing with. If my armpit is the only thing radiated than it shouldn’t do much damage to my reconstruction. If he decides to also radiate my breast or the surrounding tissue then my reconstruction will likely be damaged. My plastic surgeon is more worried about that than I am, I think!

Ultimately, I’d just like to know what the plan is. I was originally told “3-6 weeks” of radiation, which is a huge window. I’d like to know how long I have to recover after chemo, how long I’ll receive treatments, and what areas will be radiated. Right now it’s a looming unknown, so I’m glad to be getting that information sometime soon-ish rather than after I finish chemo (which is what his office originally told me). Dr. Joyce agreed that it would be good for my well-being to get that set up sooner, so she said she would arrange it. It will be nice to have a general “end date” in sight, though I will be on hormone suppressing meds and I will be living a life with fear of recurrence and all of the cumulative side effects of surgery, chemo, radiation, and the hormone suppression, so please know that I’m not really *done* when I’m done, and that is true for pretty much all cancer patients. One of the biggest complaints I see from people in cancer groups is that people don’t understand that cancer can be lifelong, even when it isn’t terminal.

I think that’s about all I’ve got. I’m going to try the steroids again this round, but we are trying a lower dose and I have a plan in place if I have another “psychological break”. I assume the other symptoms will be the same, just maybe less or more severe than last time. Nothing else has changed. I will post when I find out about my MRI and radiation oncology appointments, but they haven’t been scheduled yet.