cancer – day 74

OK, so the oncotype dx test showed my recurrence score is a 25, so we’re going to do chemo. No adriamyacin though, which is great because that’s the one that’s damaging to the heart. We have another test to do to see if I have the genetic BRCA genes that indicate higher breast cancer risk, which may make him add in Herceptin with the Tomaxifen, I think that was how that went, anyway.

So I start chemo on July 21. Before that, on July 17, I ‘m getting a port receptor put in, which is this little reservoir type thing that connects into the vein so that they don’t have to dig into me to find my veins every time they draw blood and give me chemo.

The chemo is going to be just three months long, that’s the good news. It’s going to be two drugs: docetaxel/taxotere, and cyclophosphamide. Then a month after chemo is done, I start radiation (6-1/2 weeks) and tomaxifen (5 years). Basically all this stuff is going to make me menopausal, and Dr. Lombardi kept asking if I want to have kids, because this is pretty much going to damage my body to the point that it’s about a 50/50 chance only that I could conceive. But I don’t care about that, if the time comes when I desperately want children (I honestly think I’m past that already) I’ll just adopt like my parents did. No big deal, who needs ovaries anyway. Well, except for all the reasons women need estrogen in their body that is. Uck, I am not looking forward to the menopausal side effects, everything I’ve read/heard about that is just plain awful as far as I’m concerned. That’s going to be the worst thing for me by far, I’m not concerned at all about losing all my hair, and all the treatments are just something I have to bear, but the drug-induced menopause is the thing I dread most.

At least the month of waiting is finally over, and I have something to take action on again. All this time I’ve just been reading more and more stuff on cancer, and it’s pretty depressing when you really think about it, so it was getting to a point where it wasn’t healthy for me to be doing cancer research almost every night, and it’s really good that we’re finally moving forward. I have a whole list of things I need to get done now to coordinate and help things go as smoothly as possible.

You wouldn’t believe the list of drugs they’re giving me, five different drugs, for helping with chemo side effects like nausea. And one of them causes insomnia, that’s just great. The nurse, Heidi, said I should up my Ambien prescription, because I’m going to need it more than once every three nights during chemo. Let’s hope not, one of the other drugs causes some people drowsiness, so maybe the two will cancel each other out. Let’s hope for that.

And they’re having those meds all delivered rather than me having to go pick them up at a pharmacy. Which is cool. But when I was reading through those pages in detail tonight, it looks like they switched my other medications over to Lombardi too, and switched them to generics in the process, two of which I know from past side effects I can’t take generics for. So, another phone call back to Lombardi’s office tomorrow to make sure that’s not happening. You really have to stay on top of this stuff, you know? It may seem like a little thing, generics versus original prescriptions, but why allow their habitual way of handling prescriptions put me in a situation of reliving old side effects and having to deal with all that again, on top of everything else?

The last problem is my cats. Well, not really, there’s also the problem of this trip to Phoenix for Mark’s work, but basically the fundamental problem is simply avoiding infection. Heidi said if I’m going in an airplane I should wear a surgical mask over my nose and mouth. Ugh, I don’t want to deal with that, maybe I’ll stay home instead of going with Mark to Phoenix like we had originally hoped I could do.

But the cats. Because I’m going to be so susceptible to infection, we have to be exceedingly careful about what I come into contact with. Like, I need to remind Mark to wash his hands a lot when teaching, between classes and before he comes home, and he has to be careful that HE doesn’t catch a cold or something from someone and bring that in the house and infect me. And I’m not even supposed to clean a litter box. Well, how the heck am I going to manage that one? Mark can’t even enter my house in Volcanoville because his allergies are so bad, and I’m certainly not going to ask him to go in there and clean up the litterbox and their mess every weekend (though at some point he is going to have to see an allergist so he can coexist with my cats, some day). And the cats seem so unhappy all alone up there, Mizzou is gaining weight daily, I swear. He’s blimping up big time. Seoul’s not getting fat, not yet, but she’s getting more and more skittish, she’ll be a nervous wreck eventually. I teased my mom today about sending my cats to them, but I don’t want to ship the cats to South Dakota and back. So I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I’m going to try to find a kennel nearby. There’s a place not too far away where I took them for Christmas while I was in Hawaii, it’s a cat “bed and breakfast.” They had two-story kennels (cages) next to each other with their own litter box in the bottom and a shelf with a sleeping pad for the upper story, and the kennel people let Mizzou and Seoul out together in the play room (lots of cat trees to climb and toys to play with) more than once a day. The cats weren’t thrilled to be there, they were actually happy to get in the car when I picked them up. But I think they did better there than they’re doing alone at my house out in Volcanoville, and now that chemo is for sure and we know I’m really going to be living at Mark’s for the next six months (by the time radiation is over), I don’t want to leave the cats alone up there that whole time. Anyway, this cat bed and breakfast is only about ten minutes from Mark’s place, I think. And I’ve seen several vet/kennel places here in the neighborhood if I wanted the cats even closer. Maybe the place will try to give me an extra discount because the cats are being boarded for my cancer treatment. Hey, I haven’t really played the don’t-you-want-to-help-me-just-because-I-have-cancer thing, maybe this is the time to play that card and see if it helps.

So, all in all, both a good day and a bad day. Good to finally know, but that first half hour or so back home after the appointment I was pretty lost in my mind, in a bit of shock even though this was the treatment I expected. It even happened the way I suspected, which was that the recurrence score is technically in the “gray area,” though very much at the high end (25 is the cutoff), and I suspected my score wouldn’t absolutely put me in chemo but that I would have to choose to do it. Well, with a score of 25, my oncologist recommended chemo, so I didn’t really have to make the decision, but still, weird that I had a feeling about what range the score would be in. Lombardi (the oncologist) thought that was pretty interesting and said it’s women’s intuition.

The other good news is that it’s only three months of chemo and that I’m not getting adriamyacin to damage my heart. Now I need to figure out what I can do for work and when, who’s going to babysit me when Mark has to teach on Tuesday nights, and get my disability papers squared away. Finally, something to do about the cancer.