Left you all with quite a cliffhanger there...sorry about that. To catch you up as briefly as possible, I got the best possible news after surgery: complete pathological response, or in English, they looked through all the cells that were removed and they didn't find a single cancer cell. This was the great thing about doing chemo prior to surgery - confidence that the chemo did it's job.
But I wasn't done yet. I was still supposed to do radiation. I pushed back a bit - do I really need it if we know there weren't any cancer cells left? I know the studies are all about lumpectomy plus radiation, that if you don't want radiation you have a mastectomy, but these studies are of everyone, including patients who had surgery prior to chemo and couldn't monitor whether or not the tumor was gone, and definitely not just of patients like me, where we knew the cancer cells were gone. What convinced me to do the radiation was the fact that precancerous cells had been in the pathology. This is to be expected, as chemo doesn't kill precancerous cells, but if you find someone with precancerous cells only you would treat them with a lumpectomy plus radiation.
So I started radiation in late April. I had about the same number of sessions I had for the arm, I think it was 32 or 34 (it's actually kind of nice I don't remember (: ). I took a leave of absence again, since I couldn't travel. I think I took eight weeks, a little extra at the end for recovering. You'd think with eight weeks of not working I'd get some blog writing done, but I just wasn't very interested at the time. I felt pretty good throughout, maybe just a little bit fatigued, so that's not why. Perhaps I was distancing myself from everything, I don't know.
The best thing I did while on leave was take part in a program at Pathways called Renewing Life. It really was perfect timing, as usually I couldn't participate in a series like this (and this one was nine weeks!), due to my work travel. This was just an amazing experience. Everyone in my class was dealing with a life threatening or chronic illness (although you don't have to be to take part in this class if you're interested), and the insights brought each week's session were just so great. The premise of the program is using your crisis as an opportunity for personal growth and renewal. I gained a lot of insight about my self and my life. I might share some of them, but let's get through the update first!
My last day of radiation was June 13th. In July I had an MRI of my arm, and chest CT. Of course, just like my first chest CT, it suggested something weird with my liver. So I had an MRI, and - false alarm! Nothing abnormal! Oh, and the arm and lung scans were all good too.
I haven't had any further imaging or the breast cancer - this will be either an MRI or a mammogram every six months (so, actually, the same as I was doing before, but just at opposite times of the year rather than at the same time). I saw my oncologist this week, and we talked a lot about what will happen going forward. She's planning to talk to the orthopedic surgeon about my arm, and set up a plan for regular scans. Even though I didn't have any scans to learn about, it was a good visit. I could really see that my oncologist was excited that I'm doing so well, especially the fact that I'm training for a marathon. What's that, you say, marathon? Yes, the New York Marathon, to be exact. And I think that means it's time for a new post!
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