BoobNews: "And now we wait" edition

Posted: 8/8/2016

Today it's been exactly 40 weeks since I started treatment for my cancer, the same amount of time as a full-term pregnancy. But instead of creating life I've been working to maintain it.

My original to-do list was...
Step 1: Portacath surgically implanted in my chest for my IV chemo treatments.
Step 2: 5 months total of chemo. Ok, it ended up being 4 months instead. Stupid neuropathy.
Step 3: Double mastectomy.
Step 4: 6 weeks of daily radiation treatments.
Step 5: Take an estrogen-blocking pill (tamoxifen) every day for 10 years.
Step 6: Not die.

So far, so good. I've completed all 6 steps so far, with a Step 5.5 thrown in there that's yet to be completed, which is finishing out the reconstruction. That surgery will be right after Thanksgiving and, since it's actually a more extensive surgery than the mastectomy itself was, I'll have a 4-6 week recovery time afterward.

Now, because they found some metastasis when they biopsied the lymph nodes from my mastectomy, my cancer was upgraded from Stage 2A to Stage 3A. Because of this, my oncologist has asked me to also consider having an oophorectomy (removal of my ovaries) or a hysterectomy (removing all of the reproductive things). But really, if you're gonna do it, why wouldn't you go all the way? Bag up that whole box and throw it to the curb!

She suggested it because removing these potential sources of future metastasis would MAYBE further reduce my risk of cancer recurrence. The down side is it also would require me to change my 10-year medication course from the Tamoxifen, which is a now-known entity in terms of side effects (which range from bearable to slightly beneficial) to a completely different class of daily medication, which may have completely different side effects. For 10 years. Would the side effects be better? Worse? Who knows? It's an unknown until I actually do it. So that's still under consideration, too. I'll probably end up doing the hysterectomy just to be safe but oh, Magic 8 Ball, why are you not effective?! Step up your game! Earn your $8 price!

Which brings us to the below comic that I saw a few days ago. It summarizes where I am right now really well. (You can see the full-size version here: https://xkcd.com/931/) Maybe the cancer won't come back and skipping a hysterectomy and a different medication regimen wouldn't matter. Yay! But maybe it will try to come back, metastasized to my lady parts, which are completely useless and irrelevant to me at this point in my life. They're like the "Rick Perry's Choice of Vice-Presidential Running Mate" of body parts! Which means the hysterectomy and medication trade-out would definitely be worth it.

That said, maybe the cancer will try to come back, but by metastasizing to one of the other areas it likes to jump to: bone, bone marrow, brain, lungs, lymphatic system. Then I'm just screwed and the above would have been irrelevant, too. *Sad trombone*

So, now I just try to make the best choices as far as trade-offs that I can and watchfully wait. Hopefully, I'm waiting for nothing.

Fuck cancer.