Visit with my Oncologist

Hi all. Sooo, I dated this post for yesterday because I'm going to write about yesterday separately from today. Yesterday, being Wednesday, I met with my Oncologist. His name is Dr. Gafar and he is really awesome :) He's young and funny and patient and seems really caring.

Overview on my cancer: 
• Stage 4 Ductal Carcinoma Breast Cancer that has metastasized to my Liver
• I have two tumors on my left breat and four on my liver
• I'm going to have to work super freaking hard to kick this thing's ass.

He went over everything with us again, showed me the PET scans of my body so I could see the areas of my liver that are affected. I'll tell you what, its REALLY scary to see those large black spots on the scan... I really wish that they could find a way to make them bright pink or something so at least it wouldn't seem to scary and ominous to see cancer on a scan.

We talked a lot about the cocktail that I'm going to get during my chemotherapy sessions, side effects, etc. For any of you medical buffs that are interested, these are the drugs that I'm going to be taking:

• Pertuzumab (aka Perjeta)- This is a super brand new drug that just got approved by the FDA in June. Its a targeted therapy drug and everyone is super excited about this drug. It has shown to be very effective at shrinking the type of cancer I have, along with having minimal side effects. I'm really excited and I have high hopes for it (as do my doctors)

• Herceptin- This is also another drug that is a targeted therapy. It is going to hone in on the receptors that I have on my cancer cells and hopefully shrink the crap out of them :)

• Taxotere- This is a basic chemotherapy drug. This is the drug that will bring the side effects (fatigue, hair loss, possible infertility/menopause (hopefully not), etc. Its the one that makes you feel like crap sometimes. Its job is to kill the cells that the other drugs inhibit and shrink.

The doctor told me some news that is sort of hard to wrap my head around. He said that at this point, since I have stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, I'll likely never be cancer free. He compared to being like living with diabetes or high blood pressure. If you don't take your medicine, it could kill you. But the goal is to shrink up these tumors, possibly cut out some stuff way down the road, and then keep me on medication to help keep it quiet. Its not the best news that someone could get, but anything to be ALIVE. I'm still going to be as positive and as strong as I can be.


So, I start Chemo on Friday. I'm nervous, but I've got such a wonderful support team :) Nic and my parents are going to come with me, and Laura (just like a sister, and has been AMAZING during this all so far) took off work so she can come with us tomorrow too!

There are like a million other things that we talked about, but I feel like I covered the biggies.

THANK YOU to everyone who has been sending their love, light, support, positivity. It means so much to me. I've gotten so much love on Facebook, and I'm sorry if I am slow to write back to everyone, but every moment of my time almost has been consumed with doctors appointments, scans, communing with my family... I'm so talked out by the end of the day when I can get to my computer. But every word from everyone means so much to me, and it makes me feel strong and more positive every time I get a note or a text... I love you all and all of this love I am getting back makes me feel like I can really beat this.

<3,
Linds