Hi friends and family. Let’s start with some good stuff before we dive into the not so good. As this blog serves as a bit of a time capsule (alright, along with my prolific Facebooking), I want to keep this updated on life events as well as stupid cancer events. We had a wonderful time with friends down in Sayulita, Mexico a few weeks ago. Gorgeous sunshine and awesome friends were only marred by Desmond’s refusal to get in any type of water and all of us getting horribly sick at the end of the week. But the sun infusion made it worth our discomfort. I also celebrated pulling off a huge event with my work team for 3,000 Starbucks employees yesterday that we’ve been working on for months and months. So that feels amazing.
So what DOESN’T feel amazing is my fucking cancer is thumbing it’s nose at our treatments to date and has decided to get worse. I was having REALLY bad back pain (or I thought – turns out it can get worse) right after we returned from Mexico and my oncologist sent me in for a CT scan and a bone scan. The joy of those two appointments turned out to be drinking 32 oz of barium (for the CT scan) which exasperated my Montezuma’s revenge beyond imagining and a killer panic attack in the bone scan machine (which I could only finish with Brian reading Game of Thrones out loud to me for a full hour). Then Monday I woke up to the worst pain ever in my back (I’m talking similar to labor pains). Hopped up on serious pain pills I was able to feel better by Wednesday. And now we have the official news that not only is my cancer (bone mets) not better, it’s actually worse. It’s in SEVEN spots now (instead of the original 5) and it’s bigger in the original 5. awesome. What that means is my cancer says a big F-U to the drug Faslodex which does nothing to it. It’s like the mighty mouse of cancer (how about that ancient reference??!!).
SO, the upshot is tonight I begin chemo. I will be ingesting SIX (yes, 6) chemo pills a day. The chemo is called Xeloda if you feel like looking it up. I”ll take it for 2 weeks, then have one week off and repeat. I’ll take this chemo until we see my cancer start to disappear (or seriously weaken). The very good news is I WON’T LOSE MY HAIR!! Oh yeah, the vain creature I am rejoices in that. Sure, they’ll be some nausea and fatigue, but at least I’ll keep the hair I’ve been working on for 1.5 years.
If (when) the chemo starts to work, I’ll eventually go on a medication that was just approved recently called Afinitor. That I can stay on for a long time without the dirty little side affects of chemo.
I’m feeling okay. Kind of freaked out that this cancer is so strong, but also feeling super feisty and pissed off and fired up to kick it’s ass. I’ve learned to lean on friends and family more than in the past (lots of help with Desmond, lots of coming over to care for me when my back is so bad) and that is HUGE. I’ll update soon to let you all know how the oral chemo goes…wish me luck! xoxo