3 Weeks to Go

I had my surgery three weeks ago this past Friday. I have three more weeks off of work, three more weeks until I can lift the girls (or anything over 10 pounds), three more weeks of too much thinking. Have you ever had that happen? I think I do better with stressful situations when I can bury my head in the sand, or work, or whatever and just not think. As you may or may not have guessed, there are some issues going on that have got my wheels turning, so, now I will share them with you in the event that you want to say a prayer for us etc.

Where to start....ok, about 5 or 6 weeks ago, my legs started hurting from below my knees all the way into my toes. It started out pretty mild, no big deal, but now is at a point where when the pain is at it's worst, I can feel each individual toe, and it sucks. So I went to my local doctor. She ran a B12, Lupus, Lyme's Disease, and an arthritis blood test. They all came back negative. You may be thinking to yourself, "Well, that's good news!" and it is, but it isn't since I have no clue what is causing the pain. One of my pet peeves in life is taking medication that covers what the cause of the pain is, so I am hesitant to do that, and really am a doctor's worst nightmare.....go ahead and ask any of them. So, where to go from here, you ask? I will tell you....

I called my oncologist to talk about a few things with him, mostly to talk about the results of the study that came out this past week dealing with the treatment of breast cancer. Here's the scoop on that....you are given a pathology report about your cancer that tells what stage you are, tells it's characteristics, sizes of the tumors etc. One of the things that gets tested with breast cancer is if you are her2 positive or not. Here's a little definition I found.....
What does it mean to be HER2-positive?

Each healthy breast cell contains two copies of the HER2 gene, which contribute to normal cell function. If something goes wrong in our bodies, a change can occur that causes too many copies of a certain gene to appear. This is referred to as gene amplification. If extra copies of the HER2 gene appear in a cell, the gene can cause too many HER2 proteins, or receptors, to appear on the cell surface. This is referred to as HER2 protein overexpression. Patients who are considered HER2-positive have HER2 gene amplification or HER2 protein overexpression. Cancers with too many copies of the HER2 gene or too many HER2 receptors tend to grow fast. They are also associated with an increased risk of spread.

Ok, so I tested positive for her2. It's a double edged sword...bad because of what is said above, good because I can be treated with Herceptin for a recurrence, if I have one. If I were her2 negative, I could not use Herceptin. The study that just came out basically said, if Herceptin works so well for a recurrence, how about trying it before that happens, almost as a preventative. And the results were pretty good. There are a lot of factors though, such as, a lot of the women were node positive (meaning cancer was found in the lymph nodes), which I was not. I talked with my onc about this, and he said that the American Cancer Institute is telling them to treat women who are her2 positive and have had chemo within the last 6 months with Herceptin. Next month will be 10 months since I finished chemo, and as my doctor said I fall into the grey area....again. It seems like everything with this damn cancer and I falls in the grey area. So, we will be talking more about that next month at my 3 month check. He did say that Herceptin is given weekly for a year. Something we would have to weigh out I guess.

Then I asked him about numbers. I wanted to hear what the chances of me getting cancer again would be. Some people want to know, some don't. I do. And here is what he said...

If I only had done surgery and radiation, there would be a 60% chance of the cancer coming back within 10 years. Lovely. But don't worry, I did more than just that.

I had surgery (twice), did chemo, radiation, and am taking a daily pill called Tamoxifen for about another 4 years. By doing all of that I dropped my rate down to 30%. Hmmm...seems to me that with how much I have done, how much I have been through, that number should be lower. And yes, I understand that there is a 70% chance that I will not get cancer again, and that is a high number, but....in school that was barely a C. Am I being too negative? Realistic? Stupid? God, I don't know anymore.

So, that's that. I asked for numbers and got them. There's something to be said about honesty, and that is what my doctors have been with me. What more could you ask for? Nothing, I suppose. I will close for now, that's most of the stuff that's been on my brain for the past few days, and it's nice to get them off of my chest. Onward and upward......