At least another 3-4 months of chemo

Last Wednesday, I got the results of my latest CT scan. They were good, meaning that there was some progress, but the spot on my liver is still there. The improvement is in the fact that the spot is more fluid-like rather than solid. They tell me that it's a good thing, so I believe them.
I got hit with another round of Taxol and Avastin (and Zometa) for at least 3 months, and maybe 4 depending on how my blood work goes. If I start to have some more serious side effects, mostly neurapathy, then we will consider a different type of chemo.

On a fun and positive note, I will be heading off to Dallas on Friday morning for the Young Survivors Conference and get to meet my dear friend Carrie in person! There will be lots of other young women with BC there and I hope to make some more contacts so I don't feel so alone in this journey.

another day, another CT scan

I had my CT this AM. We started out at the outpatient radiology center, but their new policy states that if you have a port, you have to get your tests done at the inpatient center. This meant that what would have been a 10 minute process became a 90 minute hassle.

My expectation is that the spot on my liver will be gone, or closer to gone than it was 3 months ago, my bones will show some continued healing, and my left breast will still have an unidentifiable mass. We'll know more about the extent of the cancer in my bones whenever nuclear medicine decides to answer the phone so I can make an appointment . . .

Today, my cancer friend Carrie had her second lumpectomy surgery. As another 20-something BC fighter, she had a couple of rounds of chemo starting last summer and had surgery in January. When they did the pathology report on her tissue, they didn't cut out enough of the breast tissue for them to confident that they got it all. So they have to go back in and try again. She is a trooper!

Bad, Bad Blogger

So, I'm not even sure how to get through the last two weeks of life in one blog post. Chemo has been the least of my worries.

With the down turn of the economy, the Haverford College administration is trying to slim down employee benefits. In December, while we were in Cali, they had a meeting to discuss the options they were exploring. One was to take a step down in health insurance coverage. They went on and on about how if the faculty were good community members, they would suck it up and take the cut and not complain. Of course, this means a whole lot more for us than some of the other staff at Haverford. But, putting that aside, most of the faculty are either 1) not savvy enough about compensation to realize that the administration is trying to pull a fast one on them and when the economy rebounds, they will not reinstate the current plan, thus leading to a permanent reduction in their compensation packages, or 2) they are too weak to dissent. In their limited thinking, they told the faculty what they were planning to do, but masked it as "we looked long and hard at the budget and we decided that the only place we could possibly cut was in this specific way." which is total bull. Luckily, we are friends with some pretty smart folks and they starting building a movement to explore other options (mostly those that don't make a permanent dent in compensation) and point out the major flaws in the lesser HC plan. This has saved me from running out of my monthly allowance of Xanax :)

On a happy note, when Barak and I arrived at chemo on Wednesday, the nurses had set up a little celebration for our marriage. They decorated one of the chemo areas, bought a cake, and collected funds for a gift certificate to Bed, Bath and Beyond. It was a very sweet surprise. They wanted Barak and I to feed each other cake. As they were cutting a couple of slices, they were alluding to the standard wedding tradition of creaming your newly minted spouse in the face with cake. I could tell by B's expression that he wasn't following. I took full advantage of this and when it was time to "open wide" I smashed it right in his face! There were all sorts of wonderful colors in the frosting and it stained his skin pretty well. But, in true Barak fashion, while the nurses kept snapping pictures, he finished eating the piece of cake he had tried to feed me. Devlin, my onc, also gave us a gift certificate to Chilies and wrote on the card "To help you put up with each other." We were very shocked and very spoiled by my cancer team. I will have to think of something good to make for them when we start yet another round of chemo on Feb 18. I will also find out on the 18th, what my scans from tomorrow, Feb 9th look like. It's just one CT scan (Hurray -- No MRI, BOO -- to drinking lots of Barium at 7:30am).