The Past Month

It has been quite a while since I have written anything. I guess this is because so much as been going on I don't even know where to start. I will try to explain what is new and elaborate on a few things.

1. I started radiation on November 9th and finished today (25 treatments in total, once a day)! My skin in the radiation area slowly went from pink, to red, to purple to a nasty shade of brown/grey. Slowly some skin has started to peel off and I've been told that it will be at its worst 7-10 days after treatment. While this isn't ideal to be feeling at my worst over the Christmas holidays, things could be a lot worse. While radiation is by no means fun, it is a walk in the park compared to chemo and surgery recovery. A couple weeks ago I was feeling a bit fatigued but this week really haven't felt much of that at all. Chemo check, surgery check, radiation CHECK!!!

2. I went back to work shortly after returning from Newfoundland. While it is still only two half days a week, it was still a fairly big step. At first I found it pretty tiring when I got home, but slowly it has become easier and I rarely take naps now. It was also a big step because I was going to tell the kids why I was away. Kids are amazing though, you tell them something very serious, they ask a few questions and then just as quickly they seem to move on. To be honest I found it more intimidating to be back with coworkers. Don't get me wrong they have all been amazing, but it is just different now, as hard as people try you do get treated differently and that is no ones fault, it is just the situation. I am hoping to increase to another day or two in the new year.

3. Christmas this year is going to be spent out west. Mom and Dad are flying out on Christmas Eve and we have rented a condo in Invermere for four days. I guess we decided that it might be a good idea to do something different this year. It has been a very abnormal year so I really didn't feel like doing the "normal" thing for the holidays. Sometimes it is also a bit awkward seeing people who haven't seen me in a long time. Everyone knows what has happened but sometimes it just feels like it is awkward for others to be around me. Maybe no one else notices this but again things just feel different. Again, this is no ones fault, it is just the situation. So for these reasons we have decided to do something different, just the four of us (Wes is off to Ottawa on the 23rd).

4. Follow up appointments are becoming the new norm. Every three months I go for scans and a check up appointment. My last appointment was on Tuesday and went pretty well. Basically it a game of wait and see now. A small spot can still be seen on my sternum, and as long as that is stable I am good. If it starts growing again, then it will be a worry. Nothing else can be seen anywhere else in my body, which is very good. This might be the hardest part of this disease, having to just wait and see what happens, hoping for the best, but never really knowing what is happening inside your body.

Newfoundland

Writing about my week in Newfoundland has been on my mind since I got back almost a week ago. The reason I haven't has nothing to do with being busy, but more because I am still processing everything and figuring out everything that happened last week. I guess to start off I will say that I didn't really know what to expect from a "cancer conference" and I didn't really realize how difficult this experience would be. I thought I would meet new people, hear about their experiences and hear what a few experts had to say. I did not expect all emotional stuff that would come with this experience. Since my surgery more than two months ago I have tried really hard to savour my good test results and have tried my hardest to not have cancer be the centre of my universe (instead of thinking about it every minute, I could sometimes go two or three minutes without thinking about it). So I went from trying very hard not to think about it, to spending an entire weekend talking, learning and thinking about it... this was not easy. What was also difficult was meeting people who were not doing very well. It is horrible of me, but meeting these people really scared me, and while it shouldn't have been about me, all I could think about was whether this was going to be me as well. It was also difficult to hear about people who had attended the conference last year and who have since died. I kept thinking if some day I would be the person who was no longer there, and what memories people who have of me. All of these things were extremely tough, and have had me lost in my head since I have returned. I don't want to make it sound like the conference was a bad experience....because it wasn't. It made me think about a lot of things, while scary, were probably good things to consider and think about...it was just really tough. I am sure that very soon I will look back at that week and say it was an amazing experience, once I have processed everything. I can already recognize many wonderful things that came from the conference. I met lots of really amazing people who have beaten cancer and are doing amazing, fulfilling things with their lives. I met some awesome girls who have been through breast cancer and could give me advice on all kinds of things, including tips on my new body :) I also go to meet Dawn, a great girl who now lives in Quebec, who I had been emailing and chatting with since the beginning. Dawn and I were roommates and the conference and I was just amazed by her attitude, generosity and the fight she has inside of her. The information learned at the conference was also very helpful and I left with many ideas of what I could do to take charge of things a bit more. So I really hope I didn't make it sound negative, because it really wasn't, it was just difficult, but in a good way :)

My First Tattoo....Not By Choice

The last few weeks have been fairly busy, with a few new developments. Radiation should be starting on November 9th, the day after I get back from Newfoundland. I am also hoping to start back at work that week....very much looking forward to the work part...not the radiation. Today I went for a CT scan where they map my body so they know exactly how to align the radiation machine. At the end of the appointment they marked me with three small dot tattoos (look like tiny freckles). They use these tattoos every time I go for radiation to make sure the machine is perfectly aligned. It is pretty crazy that these tattoos will be with me for the rest of my life, always as small reminder (though compared to my scars they are nothing). The other excitement of the last few weeks has been planning my trip to Newfoundland and also a last minute trip to Ontario this past week. Wes and I spent about 6 days in Ontario where we visited both of our families. I finally got to meet Wes's parents and sisters which was great. I was really nice to spend time out of the city in the fresh air.

No News is Good News

I was thinking the other day about how I really have nothing to blog about lately. With chemo done and surgery over with life has sort of fallen into something of a routine with no real developments on the health front. My "non-cancer" life is really quite ordinary so don't know if sharing the details will make for a very entertaining read. It has now been more than 4 weeks since surgery and I would say that I am basically back to normal. In the last couple of days we have gone to the gym almost daily and have even been playing a bit of tennis. I was concerned that tennis might be difficult with the limited mobility in my left arm, but I would say that it has almost completely healed at this time. Other than my active activities I am getting VERY bored. Feeling as if I am basically healthy and back to normal it is starting to feel a bit silly to not be working. I am hoping this problem will be remedied soon.

This coming Friday I am meeting with the radiation oncologist to discuss radiation treatments. Originally I thought that radiation would have started by now and I would be finished early November. Now it is looking like radiation might not even start until later in the month. This has me very worried because I am planning on attending a conference in Newfoundland at the beginning of November. So many people have donated towards my trip and supported this adventure and I am very worried that with my new treatment schedule I may not be able to go anymore. I will meet with the doctor on Friday and I am really hoping that somehow this trip can still work into my treatment schedule. I should have some news to share on Friday.

The Good Kind of Shock This Time

A friend told me that how she dealt with her cancer journey was to plan for the worst but hope for the best. Over the last few months this is sort of the approach I have taken. I have always tried to be positive and hope for the best, but I also have thought about the worst and how I would handle these situations. After meeting with my surgeon last week and getting my amazing pathology results I was still apprehensive about celebrating and believing that everything was as we had hoped. Today I met with my oncologist to get her take on everything and hear what was going to be happening next. Basically she said that the results I have gotten were everything we had hoped for. From this doctor, who often seems to hold back on any positivity, this was awesome to hear. The term remission gets used a lot in "cancer world" and to be honest I am not really sure exactly what it mean as it is used differently by different specialists, but the term she used was "pathological remission". At least according to my pathology results I am cancer free. I know that there could still be cancer in my body and the only way to know this for sure is to wait, go for my scans and see if anything shows up. For now though what I will hold onto and celebrate is that I have already beaten some odds. I was told that it was unlikely that the cancer would be gone, and at least for now it looks like it could be gone. So what next? I meet with the radiation oncologist next Friday and radiation should be starting within a few weeks of that. Someone once described radiation to me as "the cleanup crew". In my situation the cleanup crew could be very important as there are no cells that can be seen, but could be tiny ones floating around in there. From what I hear radiation is a breeze compared to chemo and surgery. My plan is to get back to being me as much as possible during this last phase of my treatment. It's like I took a little nap for the last 6ish months, but now, without a doubt I can say that KIM IS BACK!!!

cancer isn't killing me, I'm killing cancer!!!

The last week has been a bit difficult. It included a couple of days spent in ER for concerns that luckily turned out to be nothing. I have spent a lot of time in my head too, thinking about what has been happening to me and my feelings about the whole thing... it really hasn't been an easy week being me.

Today we finally got to see some light as I met with my surgeon to get the pathology results from my surgery. Basically they took all the stuff they cut out/off of me and tested it. Today the same surgeon who diagonsed me almost six months ago and on that day told me that he had never seen cancer grow that quickly, told me that he has never seen results like this from chemo. He said chemo will often shrink tumours like this considerably, but never has he seen it to this extent! So here are the results as I understood them. From the pathology of my breast they could tell that at one time the tumour had been greater than 8cm...they can tell that from the scar tissue. Now they could detect 0.5 mm (not cm but mm!!!) of non-evasive carcinoma (pretty much a dot of cancer cells that were just happy to be hanging out in my boob, not spreading or threatening). Next, I had 15 lymph nodes removed from under my arm and my chest. EVERY ONE of them was negative for carcinoma. They could tell that 4 had be cancerous at one time (scar tissue again) but now ZERO are cancerous. The surgeon said that it is likely that if there were cancer cells floating around elsewhere in my body they should have responded in the same way. Though there is no way to remove my sternum to do the same types of test on the cancerous spot there, it is likely that it has responded similarily. Radiation of my sternum will now be very important as if there are any cancerous cells hanging out in there still (even if they are non-evasive now I don't want them) radiation should be able to clean it all up. Obviously there are no guarantees and I still have a long road ahead of me, but there really couldn't have been any better results.

So how do I feel about all of this...to be honest it really hasn't sunk in at all. Lately I have been doing lots of reading and research about breast cancer and stage IV breast cancer. From everything that I have read/heard this type of cancer is not curable. While there have been a few cases where cure is still possible, for the most part treatment of the disease that I have is to prolong a persons life, not cure them. This is something that slowly I had come to accept, and while I still listened to all those people who told me that cure is still something of a possibility I tried to be realistic. Now, at least according to my surgeon, I have responded in such a way that maybe I can be one of those rare cases. I don't want to get ahead of myself, this is just one step of many, but at least now it doesn't seem like a complete fantasy. Today while seeing the surgeon he kept telling me "this is good news, this is good news", as I wasn't really responding as one might to such great news. I just told him that after a while you start to get used to hearing bad news and expect that it will always be that way, so maybe it will just take some time to sink in.

The Difference A Few Days Make

It is amazing how quickly I have recovered from surgery. For the first 3 or 4 days post-surgery it really did suck. There was very little that I could do for myself. I needed help to get changed, reach for things and even stand up from laying down. Luckily I had lots of great "nurses" around to help me. My mom has been great, looking after me, making sure I have been doing my exercises. Stephen also provided a lot of support, helping me in numerous ways and hanging out to help keep me entertained. The best thing I have gotten from Wes in this experience is acceptance of my new body. A while back I met a woman who had one breast removed and I remember her saying that her husband still two years post-surgery did not want to see her chest. I just thought this was so horrible. I mean you are going through something hugely traumatic and then to made to feel that you need to hide your body, like it is something hideous would only add to this difficult experience. Wes was right in there helping me empty my drains, helping me dress in the morning. I think I was a bit nervous the first time he saw my new chest, but he immediately put me at ease as he almost seemed shocked by how little of a difference it made. He has told me numerous times that it doesn't make any difference at all, and still tells me I am just as beautiful. Sometimes it almost feels like "we" have cancer and this is happening to both of us and we are fighting it together. This has made me feel so much more comfortable with my new body. I was very worried about my self esteem post-surgery and yes I am not quite at a place where I feel as confident physically as before, but it is nowhere near as hard and I thought it would be. I can look in the mirror and really think things don't look that bad or unattractive, and I think I have the accepting people in my life to thank for this. It almost feels liberating in a way that I am hardly affected by the loss of my breasts. Today there are countless women (and men) out there who put such huge importance on this part of the female body. Women go through major surgery that has huge risks in order to just enlarge their breasts. It makes me feel very strong that I don't feel influenced by this aspect of society at all. Women like me can still be beautiful without breasts!

After I got over those first few bad days and then had my horrible drains taken out a week after the surgery I have felt almost like my normals self. I am driving again, meeting up with great friends for coffee/lunches and getting out doing things with mom. If only the weather was a little better so we could do more activities outside. There is still a bit of stress as I wait to find out results of a few test, including the pathology report from my surgery. This is very important as it will show how much cancer was still left in my body after chemo. The best news I could possibly get is that my breast tumour was shrunk down to only scar tissue and that the lymph nodes that were once cancerous were now cancer-free. This is the best case scenario and what I try to visualize every night when I am laying in bed. I picture these black evil spot on my breast, under my arm in lymph nodes and in my sternum and then I imagine them getting squished, shrinking and chiseled away until they are non existent. Feel free to give it a try as well. Who knows what can happen if we all put our minds towards a common goal!