Emotional Highway

Last week was one heck of a week! Let's start with the good news... my white blood cells were just high enough to be able to do another dose of chemo. Yippee!! It took two different blood tests and a week of doing absolutely nothing, but we were able to make it happen, and I am grateful.

I started the week meeting with my chemo doc for our check in appointment. It was decided at the very beginning of the appointment that I would be off work for the week. This was to allow my body the time and my brain the ability to just shut everything off. There is no vitamin or food that can increase your white blood cells. The only thing that works is rest and no stress. This was hard for me as I don't sit still well. Somehow, I managed to only check email once a day. Hopefully not working won't be a long-term thing. If it is, I will definitely drive my hubby nuts. Having minimal contact with the outside world made me a bit clingy. I tried to not be so cray-cray and started an organization/clean-up project, so I'm going to drive him nuts anyways. LOL

Trying to save my husband's sanity, I brought up adding back in the white blood cell shot/booster. But, no, it's not that easy. It takes about a week for the shot to start building new white blood cells. When I was doing chemo every other week, that was fine, but with doing chemo every week, it doesn't give the shot enough time to work. If we end up having to skip another week, we might add in a shot, but it most likely won't happen. We also talked about what would happen if my white blood cells didn't cooperate. Having too much time between doses of taxol is not ideal. She then decided to reduce the amount that I'm receiving by 10% in hopes it will give my white blood cells a fighting chance. We also discussed that at any time I felt I couldn't continue with the chemo, we could stop, but she ideally, I would have at least 6 doses of the taxol done. I'm hoping I can do all 12 but will be happy if I only do 10. It is so hard knowing that as much as you want to reach the finish line, it might not be possible.

While I was at my appointment my eyes were watering like crazy! I mean it was so bad that she thought I was crying. Once I explained that I wasn't crying but I also had to give up wearing eye makeup cause it runs right off due to the massive watering eyes I have developed, she gave me a tip. Go get a bottle of natural tear drops. Huh?!?! My eyes are watering because the chemo has sucked almost all the moisture out of my body. Adding in the eye drops will help keep them moist, and in turn slow down the watering. Within 2 days of regular eye drop use, my eyes feel like normal again.

Now for the super good news... My tumor has shrunk by half its size!!!!!! I left the office walking on cloud nine. All the nastiness of the two different chemo treatments so far were worth it.  I went home and celebrated with a bowl of ice cream for lunch.

Next up was a check in with my breast surgeon. As I was driving to my appointment my chemo doc's office called. The blood draw that they did the day before showed my white blood cells were still a bit too low to do chemo on Friday. They wanted to know if I could come back up and give another blood sample. My day was wide open after my appointment with the surgeon thanks to not working, so I added to my calendar to head up afterwards. Now, the plus side is I learned from the week before not to start the steroids until I got the go ahead from the doctor's office. Starting the steroids late might keep me up all half the night, but I didn't want to start them without needing them.

The appointment with my breast surgeon was very informative but left me feeling a bit emotionally unstable. Even with all of this good work of the tumor shrinking, there is still a chance - a small one, that we won't be able to do a lumpectomy and I could lose the whole breast. I am trying not to dwell on this, but it is overwhelming. If a mastectomy has to be done it will add an additional 6 - 12 months to my recovery. This wasn't part of my plan, but if I have to pivot I will. I just won't be happy about it.

Another thing that I learned is that there is a very short window of time available between finishing chemo and having surgery. Once chemo is done, I will need 3 weeks to let my body recover and heal from the chemo. BUT I will need to have the surgery by 6 weeks from my last chemo date. All of this is to make sure that the chemo doesn't start growing again. The small plus with this time frame is I will have surgery by end of 2022.

So, with my head a spinning I went back up to my chemo doc for another blood test. The team rushed the results through and within the hour I got the call. Start popping those steroid pills! Your white blood cells went up just enough to do chemo.

​So, here I now sit, 3 days past chemo popping Advil like candy cause the joint pain is out of this world. Tomorrow should be a turning point... just in time to get back on this emotional highway again.