Positivi-tee: Don't Ignore Stage IV

So a year ago yesterday I got the news that I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Worst day of my life until two weeks later when we found out it was already metastatic, boy was that a doozy. I won't go into it (I've written about it here and here, if you want the longer explanation) but basically what a year, right? 

I didn't want to dwell on Diagnosis Day too much (especially since it's also Enrique's birthday and I'll forever hate having those two attached to each other) but I did feel like I needed to do SOMETHING. When I was first diagnosed I told myself and everyone else, "a year from now this will all be over," and while I could not have been more wrong, I also choose to believe that the hardest part is over. I choose to believe that the treatments in research and development as we speak are going to be successful and that they will have an amazing impact on my life and that of others fighting this terrible disease. I choose to believe that just around the corner is something coming that will save my life.

But I can't just sit back and wait. So to recognize my first year (like I keep saying, one year down, 50--or more!--to go) of thriving with metastatic breast cancer, I'd like to raise an awesome amount of money for METAvivor Research and Support Inc., an organization that specifically raises funds to research metastatic breast cancer. Breast Cancer Wellness Magazine has named METAvivor the 2016 National Breast Cancer Nonprofit of the Year, and in October 2016 METAvivor announced its participation in the Cancer Moonshot initiative, with a commitment to funding $1 million in metastasis research grants in 2017, and $2 million in 2018 – all focused on Stage IV metastatic breast cancer.

This area of research is sadly underfunded--only an estimated 2% of funds raised for breast cancer research study metastasis--and one that is vital to winning the fight against breast cancer. Selfishly, I truly believe that I myself will benefit from the life-saving treatments that result from Metavivor's research grants; but more than that, I believe that we can help ensure that no other family will know the pain of losing a loved one to breast cancer. 

I've started a habit of wearing "positivitees" to all my chemo treatments and tests; I feel like it creates good vibes and just gives me a little boost. Therefore it seemed fitting to spread the positivity with a tee shirt fundraiser (If you wish to donate to Metavivor directly without purchasing a shirt you may do so here.). I asked my sister-in-law Cindy to help me with the design; I knew she'd be perfect because she's not only a talented graphic designer but also the daughter of a breast cancer survivor... and simply kind, generous, and always up for a project! Thank you Cindy for the beautiful design and putting up with all my little "tweaks." My campaign is NOW LIVE and will run for the next three weeks! We need to sell a minimum of 11 shirts to ensure that they're printed and distributed. It's super-easy--visit the linky-link here to select a unisex, slim-fit or child's size tee, order online and it will be mailed directly to you in about five-six weeks (you can read FAQs about the fundraising platform, Bonfire.com, here).

The quote on this shirt is one that I've repeated often to myself throughout this year and will continue to hold dear as I move forward on this journey--I can't change what's already happened and my anger, sadness, fear and frustration with the situation won't make it any better; and as much as I try to control it I can't guarantee what the future holds. But I know that God made me strong, incredibly stubborn, and gave me the most amazing people to help me along this journey, and that, combined with science and prayer is a powerhouse. The arrow going through a diamond has several meanings--a single arrow traditionally represents protection from negative forces and that you want to move forward despite what hardship life might throw in your direction, and passing through the diamond symbolizes courage and success.

For months now I have been telling my young oncologist (I'm guessing she's around 40... with a PHD on top of her MD, what have I done with my life?) that she will treat me until she retires and then pass me along to some other young whippersnapper, and now she's telling me that's her goal, too! I absolutely believe that I can do this for 50 years, unless a cure comes along first! I've one year down, and I know that I've got at least 50 to go!! Please join me in raising funds for the groundbreaking research that will help win the fight against breast cancer! 

Thank you for ALL the support in the past year and going forward, 

More Candles

So I have a birthday coming up. I'll be 33. The part of me that still thinks the '90s were ten years ago thinks that this is really old. But in cancer years I think we'd all agree that this is very, very, very young.

Maybe for a year or two birthday drinks were fun. that quickly got old (ha) as I hit the wrong side of my mid-twenties. For a long time I couldn't stand the attention my birthday would bring; every year I felt the pressure of getting older and not having accomplished what I thought I should have by then. And though I adore my family and celebrations with them, I really would've preferred absolute minimal mention of the occasion. I'm weird. I deleted my birthday from Facebook so that I wouldn't get the obligatory messages from people who I only heard from once a year. After a couple years even most of my longtime girlfriends, whose birthdays we've all known since long before Facebook, seemed to lose track of it, and that was fine by me.

Then it became a thing where NOT making a big deal of my birthday became a bigger deal and that was... also weird. I had hoped that Milo might be born really close to my birthday so that his would henceforth forever overshadow mine, but the little Critter came three weeks early and botched that plan. Finally in the last year I felt like I had come to a place where I could be content with just enjoying the love I felt on my birthday, have no expectations for the day, and not let it be a reminder of what I hadn't done yet. I had my family, my precious little boy --my greatest accomplishment-- and looked forward to the handmade cards he would make or goofy little things he would pick out as a birthday present for mommy as he got older.

Then cancer happened.

In fact, it happened on Enrique's birthday; which I will never forget and still wish I could change so that it wouldn't always be something he remembers on his special day.

Now, and for the rest of my life, I'll be coveting my birthdays, collecting and hoarding them and anxiously awaiting the next one while simultaneously willing time to slow down. I'll be constantly looking forward to Milo's next birthday so that I can see him grow and count another year with him, while at the same time clinging to his little-ness. I'll be forever trying to make Enrique's birthdays special in an effort to make up for his 2016 birthday/my diagnosis day.

For the rest of my life, birthdays will mean something more. And I now understand more than ever why they are always worth celebrating, no matter how much I feel like I haven't done enough in the previous 365 days. Sometimes, just making it to another birthday is reason enough to celebrate.

I had an infusion appointment this year on my birthday and I am planning to bring cupcakes to the oncology offices. Their job is to make sure that all of us getting treated are able to celebrate many, many, many, many more birthdays and I can finally say that I am looking forward to each one to come.

Celebrate,

The C-word

So I've kind of put off writing and sharing this with the world, though some of you I've spoke to individually know a bit more about what's been going on. But I have words and pictures to spam you with for Milo's birthday in a couple days so I thought it was time to get this out of the way.

I haven't written about my current cancer fight in awhile and I guess you could say it was a bit of a mental play on my part --- if I waited until I had good news to share, it would be some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy or something, I could manifest the positive progress I was waiting for... Bear with me because this turned into a bit of a novel.

It also hurt to write about something so scary. I generally keep it pretty positive and for awhile we weren't sure how do-able that would be. Prior to starting my chemotherapy I had a PET-CT scan that would show if there had been any cancer activity besides the tumor we found in the biopsy --- and the results showed that it had in fact spread pretty aggressively. I will never forget sitting with the oncologist, next to my dad who was holding Milo, and hearing that the clinical terms to describe my condition included "metastatic," "incurable," "inoperable." How could this have gone unnoticed? How long has it been there? How quickly had it spread? How could my body, which created and grew and delivered and nourished the most perfect baby boy less that a year earlier, now betray me in the worst way?

The reality now is that I will live with this disease for the rest of my (long and fulfilling) life. It's already spread beyond its original location meaning that it could go anywhere and I'll be on-guard for that every single day. Given the current treatments available, I will continue to get an IV full of drugs every three weeks, indefinitely. The reality, pardon my language, is #fuckcancer.

But like I said, I didn't want to share all this bad news until I could follow it with better news. And, Praise God! there's been plenty of that --- I've had an incredibly easy time handling chemotherapy. It's weird how quickly it started to feel routine. The first day is the longest so they can deliver the drugs slowly and monitor your reactions each time,  so E and I binge-watched Mozart in the Jungle and it was actually almost like a nice day date, even though I stressed over leaving Critter for the longest I'd ever been apart from him. 

Since then I've finished my fourth cycle of chemo and I am still feeling fine overall; a bit of upset stomach here and there and sometimes tired but honestly not different than being-up-at-night-with-a-baby-tired. We also requested an MRI to determine if anything had spread to my brain (my oncologist said she didn't see any symptoms but I reminded her I hadn't had symptoms of ANYTHING other than a blocked milk duct), and that came back clear! And one thing that I'm extremely grateful for is that the genetic testing I did doesn't show any markers for known hereditary predisposition to this or other cancers --- so while they can't test for everything, there's nothing currently that shows my family is at any more significant risk than they were before.

"You Are My Favorite Reason To Never Give Up"
#hopsitalbathroomselfie

After the third round of chemo I was scheduled for anther PET-CT scan to see how things were going and determine if we were on the right course. I prayed so hard leading up to it --- that we would at least not get bad news; that any improvement would be a good thing. I prayed that the chemo was doing its job and that every healthy choice I made was making a difference in stopping the spread of this disease and in reversing its toll on my body. I prayed that I'd have the strength to face whatever the results were and that we and my doctors would be guided to the right decisions. My doctor told me beforehand she was optimistic, given my reactions so far, and I prayed she was right. The day after the scan her nurse called me. After my first scan the phone call was short, and they told me to come in that same afternoon to discuss the results. This time the phone call was short, and gave me the news I'd prayed to hear, "your scan shows significant improvement." Even though she couldn't provide more detail until my upcoming appointment, we had so much thanks and praise and were overjoyed with this good news. I celebrated with frozen yogurt --- previously something I would often eat multiple times a week --- for the first time in months.

We had my regular pre-chemotherapy appointment about a week later with my oncologist and we discussed the PET-CT results. She showed us the film taken which looks a bit like an x-ray, you can see the outlines of my body and the spots lit up on the screen, for lack of a better description, show the tumors and their activity --- the brighter the mass, the greater the size and more active (that's an overly generalized description but you get the idea). Anyways, you can see in comparing my scans from February and April that after three chemo cycles the primary tumor in the right breast and lymph node, that started it all, have gone down noticeably in size and activity.


She said that this is the case for the majority of my tumors --- about 95% of the lesions have reduced in size and activity. This is great news! Praise God! The stubborn one so far seems to be the bone lesion, but they can explore possible other treatments if it doesn't respond well by the end of the planned six cycles.

Working on channeling this "Crazy Sexy Cancer Survivor" mindset.
I can definitely do hard things. Also I keep adding more arm candy.

Have I mentioned that I can TOTALLY feel the good vibes from everyone?
Because I can.

She's encouraged that I still feel really good, and it's possible that they may add one or two additional chemotherapy cycles as we get to the end of what's already planned. However, there has to be a careful balance between using the medicine to shrink tumors and not hurting the body by giving it too much toxicity. From what we've learned, most patients can handle about six to eight cycles of these toxic chemotherapy drugs, and those cycles will typically provide the maximum effectiveness in shrinking the tumors.


At that point I will stop receiving docetaxel which is more toxic, but continue to receive pertuzumab and trastuzumab, which are highly specialized to target my particular type of breast cancer and are showing game-changing results in clinical studies. I'll continue to receive these every three weeks indefinitely, until cancer activity picks up again and starts to progress or some new therapy proves to more effective or some other significant change occurs. The goal here will be to keep the cancer stable and stop it from progressing any further. It's possible that I may still be a candidate for a mastectomy after the chemotherapy, so if you're the praying type, you can pray with us that the chemo reduces the cancer elsewhere in my body enough that they are confident that surgery would be effective; and that these two amazing new drugs stop any further cancer activity and do their job of keeping my body stable, healthy and functional.


The oncologist said that yes, the best case scenario at the end of my six chemotherapy cycles would be to see no evidence of disease and though complete remission is not likely at this stage, it IS possible... But if it's possible I don't see why it couldn't happen to me. In my prayers and thoughts I remind myself and God (I'm sure He doesn't need reminding) that no good would come of me getting any worse, but SO MUCH GOOD would come of me being an amazing success story.

My success would be a win for the fight against breast cancer --- it would show that these drugs and treatments are effective and rightfully the standard of care. It would show that changing your lifestyle to keep yourself naturally healthy as possible can only help in the cancer fight. It would show that faith and prayer and positivity and optimism aren't just catchphrases that get printed on pink tee-shirts but truly powerful and transformative weapons in the fight against this terrible disease. My success would be a step towards making metastatic cancer first a manageable chronic condition and soon curable. I can already hear my doctors or even doctors I've never met telling their patients decades from now, "we had a young lady with a pretty rotten prognosis but she fought like hell and now she's happily still enjoying life and cancer is just a small part of it." I remind myself that studies and data may show typical results and prognoses and such, but the simple fact that I have this diagnosis at this point in my life makes me not typical --- I expect great things of myself and that I can be someone whose success helps mark a turning point in treating and beating this disease.

I saw a quote recently from another young lady, currently fighting and living with advanced stage cervical cancer, who summed it up, "I have cancer, cancer doesn't have me." And like Stuart Scott said, "You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and the manner in which you live." I have so much faith that God put me on earth to be Milo's mama and that he and I have so much more to do together and share with the world. This is an ongoing fight and the incredibly blessed life I have is worth every second of it.

Be assured I'll never stop fighting,