A wreck of a Monday

Hi guys! It's been a few days since my last post so wanted to give another update. It's been a busy week and in case anybody was wondering my hair is still stuck to my head and I'm still really blonde. :)

So with all this "stuff" going on lately, my brain has been very jampacked full of thoughts, all the time. Combine that with what they call "chemo brain" and I've been quite loopy. Despite the loopiness, I'm trying to carry on a regular life and work as I normally would. But yesterday, I got a huge wake up call. I was driving to FSN to work on my show as I do every Monday. Lately I have really enjoyed my drives as I have some time to myself, I play some good music, and I try to relax. The week after my diagnosis I was having one of these "relaxing drives" from the Stars practice facility in Frisco out to FSN in Irving.. just driving, listening to Jack Johnson's new album (he makes me happy) and trying to clear my head. All of a sudden, a giant, like really giant, rock flew up on to my windshield and cracked my windshield from the top to the bottom and even left a little glass on the dashboard. It was scary. But I drove to work, called a company to come out and fix it, paid $150 dollars to have it fixed and went on with my life. Well, yesterday, my nice relaxing commute to work was rudely interrupted once again.

I was almost to work- listening to the new Hunter Hayes song- "Everybody has somebody but me" and thinking about how much I liked it. Who knows what else I was thinking about. My brain just flutters around with all kinds of random thoughts lately. So I was in the parking lot of the office building right next to mine, weaving my way through their lot so I could go through the back entrance up into our parking lot. It was raining, but not pouring. I pulled up to a four way intersection within the parking lot where I had a yield sign. There are never usually any cars crossing there, so I slow down a little and usually keep going. This time, a car came cruising by in front of me on it's way to turn on to Royal Lane and when I saw it and went to slam on the brakes it was too late. I crashed right into the side of the car. It was bad. Luckily I was OK, and so was the other driver. Somehow, even though I had just crashed into this girl's new Jeep Grand Cherokee, she was really really nice to me. I was a mess. I just kept apologizing over and over and I think I even blurted out "I have breast cancer!"... geez.  Don't know why- I guess I just felt like I needed to explain the waterworks. We sat there in the rain and waited for tow trucks to come as neither of our cars could drive away. My uncle Bill came and met met me and helped with the aftermath and then took me to Chick Fil A. (Obvioulsy.) I finally got to work about three hours later and managed to get all my work done before mom came to pick me up around 7 PM.
I've since talked with my insurance company and found out that I will just be responsible for my deductible, and her car is covered for up to $25,000 worth of damage. Unless something crazy happens, her car shouldn't be that bad. I got a nice pretty black Jeep Liberty similar to the Jeep Patriot that I drive. It'll probably be a few weeks before I get my car back but it's not going to be totaled or anything. It was not a fun experience and not something that I need to be dealing with, but it definitely gave me a wake up call! Although my head is jampacked with thoughts and sometimes I feel like it may as well float off like a giant balloon- I need to remember to keep my head in the game and stay focused. Cuz apparently wrecks still happen, even if you have cancer. I'm just glad I'm OK because crutches and cancer would not have been a good look... and I'm not sure my little body can handle anything else right now!

In other news, I'm getting ready for Stars hockey here at work and hoping to get some good rest tonight as tomorrow is chemo day number three. I'll go in around 9:30- get my blood work done- (that's where they test to make sure I have enough white blood cells to go forward with the chemo treatment)- then I'll meet with my doctors at 10:00 before going to do my work out and then I'll go for chemo. When I meet with the doctors, I'll find out how things are progressing and I'm looking forward to that. Last treatment my doctors were high fiving they were so happy with how much the tumor had shrunk. (yay!) I'm hoping for more of the same tomorrow!!! I'm also going to get some big news as my doctor will have decided if I'm going to be getting the drug Herceptin or not. You only get Herceptin if you test positive for HER2. (Human Epidural Growth Factor Receptor 2). My initial tests all came back as "triple negative" which meant that the HER2 test came back as negative, along with the other two types of receptors that are tested for, estrogen and progesterone. When they re-tested for HER2 it came back as leaning toward positive. So I think I'm kind of confusing.  The doctors have been meeting and discussing what to do with me- and that's what I will find out tomorrow. From what I understand, Herceptin is a very efficient drug, that when paired with chemo, makes your chemo turn into "super chemo", which can't be a bad thing, right? The down side to Herceptin is that it will add on another 2 initial treatments (4 more weeks of chemo) and then once that is over I would have to get Herceptin by itself for a year. That doesn't sound fun, but it's not a chemotherapy, it is a "target therapy" and it doesn't make your hair fall out or cause the extensive side effects like chemo does. I think it also helps a lot with decreasing the chances of recurrence of the cancer....which is obviously huge. So we shall see! Big day tomorrow. Time now for me to go watch this Stars game and get to work- and then I will be driving home very safely. :) Will try and update tomorrow with my news!

XO
Julie