Last Wednesday I went in for my 4th chemo treatment and got a lot of news. Kelly was my chemo partner this time which is always great :) I love when he can be with me. First I went in for my blood work which was all good. That means I can proceed to get the chemo treatment. My doctors were running a little behind so I went and did my 30 minute workout with FITSteps for Life after I got my blood work done. I like doing this workout and who knows, maybe it is part of the reason my side effects have been kept at bay and the cancer is shrinking. So after the workout I went to visit my doctor and her nurse Christina. She told me that she is going to add Carboplatin to my drug "recipe" for the last four sessions. This is the drug that has been good at producing a "pathological complete response"to the chemo- which means that they hope the cancer will be ALL THE WAY gone before surgery and NEVER COME BACK. I really hope it is ALL THE WAY GONE and NEVER COMES BACK!!!! Work, Carboplatin, work!! :) I will get this drug along with a drug called Taxol every three weeks. So my treatments will now move from every 2 weeks to every 3 weeks. It will be nice to not have to worry about chemo every couple of weeks but the down side is that it pushes everything back by three weeks. My first Carboplatin/Taxol treatment will be December 4th. The chemo will now take me through the end of February. So that means my surgery will most likely be at the beginning of March. I'm a little bummed because Kelly and I will basically be off for the whole month of February for the NHL's Olympic break. It would have been good timing to have surgery and recover without having to miss any work. March will get super busy for us again so it's not the ideal time... but let's be real, I guess there's never an ideal time to have your boobs cut off!! :0 I can't stress about it as that won't do me any good. So mastectomy will be early March, then I recover for about three weeks and then I will most likely start radiation. Radiation will last 5-6 weeks and is every day Monday through Friday for 15 minutes. That will be tough. Not sure how that's all going to work with my schedule but we'll see! Then I need to rest and recover for three whole months before my reconstruction, which puts me at about August for that big time surgery. It' s a lot longer timeline than I was hoping. I will have "expanders" put in with my mastectomy and will keep those until my reconstruction. They fill the expanders every month or so with salene which will help to progressively stretch your skin out to be able to fully finish the reconstruction. I have soooo many questions about all of this and now have an appointment set up with my plastic surgeon for December 18th and I'll get to find out a lot more! Hope everyone has a great Holiday weekend!! XO
Julie
Julie
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