it's been a while...

greetings!

so i'm not even sure who will see this post or not, i suppose those who were set up to receive email updates from this blog, maybe those who stumble upon this via cyber space, maybe no one will ever see it. and i'm ok with any of that. this post i am writing really more for myself than anything else. when i set out to write this blog, i created it as a way for my friends and family to get updates on my treatment, as well as a journal for me to express how i was feeling as a then 27 year old woman recently diagnosed. at some point it got too mundane for me and was no longer therapeutic. i felt like every two weeks i was just saying and posting the same things, because in a lot of ways that's what my life had become, a constant cycle, thursday, go to dana farber in the morning, spend half the day sitting in a chair staring at chris, staring at me, go home, be sick and tired all weekend, try to have a normal life for a week, start process over again, rinse and repeat.

i look at the date of my last blog and it's a little haunting to look at. it was two days before my last scheduled treatment date, it was two days after the original date chris and i were supposed to get married. and thinking about it now, i basically just walked away from this blog. i walked away from feeling the need to have everyone know what was going on with every detail of my treatment. i was sick of answering questions, getting poked and prodded every two weeks by doctors, feeling anxiety every minute of everyday not knowing what was going to happen next. i've had a few people say to me over the past 2 years that they felt like they never got closure from my blog, they followed for six months and then i kind of just dropped off the face of the earth in blog world. obviously my friends and family knows how it all ended and how things turned out, and i've been thinking about writing this post for a long time now, but today i feel like it's time. i'm 29 now, and there have been many moments over the past 2 years that have made me feel so lucky, so privileged to be here, i feel almost guilty for being happy about it when so many people don't make it. but i've finally come to a place where i need to be happy for myself.
so here we go:

1. i'm cancer free!!! whoo hooo!! yes on 11/7/2010 i was declared cancer free! oh it was a lovely new england fall morning, stressful like no other. i think i didn't sleep the night before because i was so terrified of what the next day would bring. what if it wasn't over? what if they didn't get everything? what if i have to go through some worse treatment? what's going to happen to me? what if what if what if. i'm an anxious person by nature, chris likes to call this the 'what if game' you should hear some of the crap i come up with.of course his answer always is 'then we deal with it' so i went into DFCI, had a petscan, then waited. and waited. and waited. we had to wait for dr. lacasce to give us the diagnosis, and it was an especially packed day in the office, also it was the first time i had been there in the afternoon, it was like seeing a whole different crew in there. but eventually the good doctor came in, gave us the good news and i basically sprinted out of there. my stepdad shouted in the waiting room, which was of course extremely inappropriate, my mom cried, and i just wanted to leave. i wanted to leave and never come back. of course i would be back, every 3 months. for the next two years. just for standard check ups, every appointment was switched off between just blood work (just a pinch! p.s. i now forever have 'petite veins') and CT scans. everytime all clear, coincidentally, this year on 10/4/12 (i should have played the lottery or something) i went back to see dr lacasce for my 2 year check up and i'm officially 2 years cancer free! the 2 year mark is a big deal, this is when you are at the highest risk of the cancer coming back. and this is when they treat it more aggressively. it's also when you decrease your visits to every six months, with just 1 CT scan per year. since i left treatment they have opened the new yawkey center at dana farber, it's beautiful! it's really such a fitting place for such amazing people to be and do the work they are doing. i'm happy that chris and i have done the jimmy fund walk for the past two years and have raised over 5k for the jimmy fund. we continue to try and give back in anyway we can. there isn't a day that goes by that i'm not grateful to everyone i came across while i was there. it's so bizarre now to go there and be so far from treatment and be in the waiting room and see people in the different phases of treatment. i just want to hug them and tell them it's going to be ok, and if it isn't, it will be someday. but i know they don't want to hear that, so i don't.

2. i'm married! chris and i got married on 2/12/11 at the omni parker house in boston. it was the most perfect day ever and the most fun day i had ever had. we had to drastically cut our guest list. this was not an easy decision to make as we wanted to have everyone there to celebrate all that we had been through and overcome, we contemplated eloping, waiting even longer, but i'm glad we did what we did, i loved every minute of it, and wouldn't change a thing.

3. we bought a house! yes last june chris and i entered the real estate market with a vengeance and bought a lovely property in north attleboro. we love having a house, i love decorating it, chris loves yard work, (i tolerate it), we love having our friends over, i love love love having a house,

4.we have a dog! this past march chris gave me the second greatest thing to ever happen to me (other than him, of course;)) my baby girl willow!!! i literally had no idea how much i could love a dog as much as i love her. she is the perfect dog, so calm and well behaved, so pretty, she likes long walks, playing with squeaky toys, and cookies. i mean just look at her.

ahhh! that face!

so as you can see a lot has changed over the last 2 years, bottom line is that life has moved on. i started thinking about writing this post a couple of weeks ago when i learned about another young person get diagnosed with cancer, she is young, a mother of three, but still, in her early 30s and to think that she has to go through all of this with young children, just really got to me. battling cancer is hard. the things you think about, the emotional roller coaster you go through, the toll it takes on relationships, your mind, your body, it's exhausting. it effects you forever. you can never go back to being a person that never had cancer. you are put in a different category in life. never again can you hear about someone getting diagnosed and not take a minute to really know what that person is going through. what they will go through. i'm so blessed to have survived this. that's  something i have taken for granted. i've been spending a lot of time over the last two years trying to almost ignore what happened. acting like it wasn't a big deal. it is a big deal, i had cancer. it happened, i dealt with it, and made it through. but it doesn't stop there. i will forever live with the anxiety of it coming back, developing another type of cancer, life long side effects (did you know i can never donate blood again?) but again, that's the what if game, and part of my journey is to embrace those fears and learn to live with them, you really can't live your life thinking about the what if's. IF something happens, THEN you deal with it.

so i want to thank all of you for following this blog to begin with. i started this out as something for all of you, but it ended up being something so much more important for me.

random

i just saw this on my friend's blog and found it so amazingly true that i wanted to share it will all of my friends. everyone spends alot of time thinking and talking about what cancer does to you, but not a lot of time talking about what it doesn't have to do to you. as i enter my last week of treatment i know how important it is to recognize these things.

Cancer is so limited
It cannot cripple love
It cannot shatter hope
It cannot corrode faith
It cannot destroy peace
It cannot kill friendship
It cannot suppress memories
It cannot silence courage
It cannot invade the soul
It cannot steal eternal life
It cannot conquer the spirit

thanks kristyn!

oops!

so it's been quite a while since i last posted, and for that, i am sorry. i guess after i last posted was when i really started to lose it with being home all the time. i was going really stir crazy and made a decision that i am now very happy with. i returned to work!

it was all just becoming too much for me to be home everyday. especially on the days when i felt great, which other than the immediate days surrounding treatments, was more often than not. i think it was important for me to take the time off at the beginning of treatment, and even for a month or two after, just to deal with this all, to take it all in and figure out how my life was going to adjust to this unexpected turn. and once i did that, and got used to the routine of every other week feeling crappy for a few days, i needed out!!

i noticed myself getting a little more testier (than usual) with people, and just getting annoyed. and also i felt myself getting dumb. this could be due to the 18 hours of tv a day i was watching. i lost my attention span, i couldnt concentrate on a book for more than a chapter or two, and even magazines were becoming a chore to go through. so after talking with my doctors, and thinking about it alot, i decided it was time to get back to reality.

i started out slow, only coming in for a few hours every few days, just getting caught up on stuff like emails and whats been going on in the four months (!!!!) that i had been gone. this also allowed people to get used to seeing me again. i think when you dont see someone for a while and you hear they are going through something like this you can only assume when you see them again they will be sickly, pale, and skinny. well, for me only one of those attributes is true, and that's the pale part, oh and i guess the sickly part. people are always shocked when they see me "you look great!" well, i feel great! if you are seeing me, that means i feel great, if i dont feel great, i'm on the couch with real housewives on the tv. and as for the skinniness, i must say i am a medical marvel and have managed to GAIN weight during treatment. not alot, but enough that i think it will be a shock to my system when i dont allow myself to 'eat whatever i want, whenever i want' as my doctor instructed.

i knew it would take a few weeks of catching up with people, letting them know i was easing myself back in, that i am still doing ok even during treatment, i was ready for that adjustment. so then after the completion of cycle 5a i was back at it at cramer. working full days, other than my treatment days (every other thursday) and the friday and monday following. and i'm loving it. you dont realize how much you need the social aspect of work in your life. you need to be around people, you need to hear what is going on in other people's lives, projects at work, to know there is a life outside of your own. i was allowing myself to get too involved with my illness, and that wasnt good for anyone. including my darling fiance chris who had to put up with me being my not so pleasant self (love you chris!)

so again i am grateful to not only work for a company that kind of just let me decide when i was ready to come back, but to work with the people that have made it so easy to come back!

it's already august!

so i dont really have a good excuse as to why i havent written in almost a month. i guess my treatment is getting so routine that i didnt really want to bore everyone with the same old same old. yesterday marked the end of cycle four, which means two more cycles and then i'm donzo! four more visits to dana farber for treatment, the end is really in sight now. before the last treatment i complained of some breathing troubles which is a common side effect of one of the chemo drugs i am on, Bleo, so i went through a series of lung tests and my doctor decided to drop the Bleo from my treatment schedule completely. this is a common practice during treatment and they are currently conducting studies on whether or not to drop the Bleo from the chemo series completely from the start but there isnt enough evidence yet to support it. so i should expect the heaviness i've been experiencing in my chest to subside over the next few weeks.

plus over the past few weeks i have been dealing on more of an emotional level with my disease, finding coping mechanisms to deal with not only getting through this, but to learn how to move on once this is over. i was reading a fellow cancer survivor's blog and she said something very interesting, that really hit home. she is about 3 months out of treatment and she said how bizarre it is to now be able to plan her life in more than two week intervals. that's really what i'm doing right now and it's frustrating. it's annoying to have one good weekend and one bad weekend, it's annoying to have to schedule your life like that.

but then yesterday chris and i had the opportunity to sit next to a husband and wife that we ended up striking up a conversation with. he has been dealing with a brain tumor for more than two years, he has had surgeries and they have tried multiple types of chemotherapy and nothing has worked. he is 38 years old with three kids. talking to him really made me feel two things, one kind of bad that i was so happy to be there yesterday talking to the nurses and telling them that this was the end of cycle four and i will be done in october. this guy has no idea when he's going to be done, or if ever, i cant imagine that frustration. but it also made me feel grateful, i'm happy i had the opportunity to sit next to him and hear his story, i know now after all i have been through not to take one day for granted, but he made it seem more real one such a different level.

cycle three...complete!

so thursday marked the end of cycle three and also the halfway point of my treatment! yaaaaay!

although it is frustrating to know i still have another three cycles, which means six more visits to dana farber i am trying to look at from a glass-half-full perspective. chris and i have created a countdown calendar (82 days), and we've decided to start planning for things past october.

this past thursday i met my new doctor on her fellowship, dr. sarah. (she prefers to be called that as most people just butcher her last name) when i met with her she asked me about myself, asked about chris, and our wedding plans as my previous fellow, dr bhatt had told her about us. i had a little bit of a breakdown telling her about chris, our wedding, and the frustration of not knowing what the future holds and being scared to plan anything. she sat back and said something that really meant alot 'at some point you're going to have to start planning' and she's right, if i dont start looking forward to things, and thinking about our wedding, this stage in my life will never end, i will always be waiting for that other shoe to drop, waiting for this to come back and throw a wrench in all my plans again. and i have to keep the mind set that this is not coming back, i'm going to finish treatment on october 7th, and bid adieu to cancer. and chris and i are going to get married, we will have a house, we will get a puppy, we will go on trips and someday have babies.

i have discovered it is way too easy to wallow in the misery of all of this, to let this thing beat you down, to let the boredom get to you. i have to make a conscious effort to stay positive and to keep moving forward and that's what i'm doing, i dont see another option. well i do, but depressed and sad isnt a good look on anyone, especially me.

there is an end in sight

so i know my loyal followers must be on pins and needles waiting for the results of my pet scan from thursday. well let me put all your fears to rest...the pet scan looked great. it showed improvement and shrinking of all the cancer that was there before. after reviewing the scan my oncologist informed me that she recomends going for the full six cycles of chemo and then do another pet scan a month after that is completed. so right now my last round of chemo will be october 7th.

now i am trying my best to be positive here and think, this is a good thing, the cancer is going away, blah blah blah. but it's just really frustrating to know i have to go back and do this 7 more times (each cycle is two visits so i will need a total of 12, and i have completed 5) and feel like this for another 3 months. it is good we have an end in sight, i think i gave myself a false sense of hope by thinking maybe i could do 4 cycles and radiation. although i know radiation can cause more complications later on, it's a quicker fix. but as everyone keeps telling me, it's better to be safe than sorry.

i'm just REALLY over this whole cancer thing.

chemo round 2...complete!

so last week marked the end of round two!

this time around was better than last time, the doctor gave me a new anti nausea drug that actually i got through my IV before the treatment started, which meant i didnt have to track a bunch of pills all weekend. i think this actually worked great, i had a good weekend, i had more energy than usual, i still had low energy and slight nausea, but all in all it was a better weekend, so thats a good thing. i think i kind of paid for it though on monday, i felt really sick all day and had to revert back to taking some of the pills again. i think the new med just wore off and my body was like in shock about it.

so next week, july 1st marks the beginning of round 3, it's going to be a really long day but hopefully it will be worth it. i go for my PET scan in the morning (warning: i will be radioactive) but since i am having the test done right at dana farber, they will be able to read the results in real time, so i have an appointment with my oncologist, dr. lacassce at noon to review the results and discuss the next steps. hopefully i will have a more firm grasp on when this will all be over after next week. i asked dr. bhatt what they hope to see in the scan, and she said it will show one of three things, either the cancer has, improved, remained stable, or gotten worse. the chances that it has gotten worse are rare, and all signs point to it has gotten better. (i havent have anymore signs of lumps, etc) so once we know the results we will discuss the options. whether to continue with chemo, start radiation, a combination or what.

either way i am scheduled to complete round 3, and since i am taking everything one day at a time, that's all i know right now!