{NOTE: This was originally published on Vanessa’s CarePage. We are copying all those posts here to have her story in one place that all can access. We are back-dating the posts to match when she originally published the post there, and marking the blog post here with Vanessa as the author as these words that follow are her own.}
Posted Mar 22, 2007 4:26pm
Today we met with Dr. Abello (the surgeon) and Dr. Brennan (the oncologist/chemo guy) and got lots of answers and information. The port they put in on Monday looks good – Jess and Christina say it looks like an alien implant straight out of the X-Files! But really you wouldn’t even notice it if you didn’t know it was there. It’s already not hurting as much too.
Today we figured out the beginnings of a game plan! Woo hoo! The details will be filled in as we get more test results and information, but for sure I will be getting chemo, then surgery, then radiation. Chemo will start in a week or two and will catch all of the random cancer cells floating around anywhere in me. So cancer beware!! This chemo and meds will probably take around five months. Sometime after that, I will get surgery – what kind depends on how things go, test results, etc… Radiation after that will get the last of it!
We’re not sure what the chemo will be like and everything since it’s different for everyone. If that makes me feel a little sick there may be ways people can help then – we don’t know yet and we’ll keep you posted! Thanks for all the food and other offers – we’ll definitely take you up on that later!
Since there has been so much breast cancer in our family, the doctors are recommending I get genetic testing. They want to see if I have the BRCA 1 or 2 genes, which will come into play later in specific treatment stuff. If this comes back positive for me, Jess and Christina might take the test too, because it might mean they’re more likely to get breast cancer. We’ll see how all that goes!
All the nurses keep helping us remember to take things day by day. Something I’ll be doing soon is getting some fake hair…I’m kind of weirded out about that! Not that it will look weird, just the thought of putting on hair in the morning…but I can fix my hair and see all sides of the hairdo before I wear it! But heck, in summer, if I’m hot – the wig stays home and the scarves come out. Christina’s gonna show me how all her artsy friends rock the headwrap. :) But if all else fails I’ll just go with the Britney look!
The only thing we have definitely scheduled next is a PET scan tomorrow to make sure there’s no cancer anywhere else. They don’t think they’ll find any, but it’s good to check. We’ll keep you up to date!