Post-Chemo 3 Update

Chemo 3 was one week ago.  Chris was here with me for my chemo (as you can see!).  Everyone at the Cancer Center liked my bright pink wig!  It kept making me smile as well.  Chris's one-week visit was punctuated by regular doctor appointments:  An extended consultation with my oncologist, Dr. Kass; a consultation with a reconstruction surgeon; a consultation with an oncological surgeon; blood tests; and a full day of chemo!  So now you all know a cancer-cation is not as glamorous as it sounds!  But we did also find time for walks, a few meals out and even two movies - so a heavily medically themed week - but not all cancer focused.  :)

Chris with his crazy pink wife.

My Chinese herbs (see photo) continue to help me manage chemo side effects.  Would you believe that the blood test that they did just before chemo 3 showed that my blood count is normal?!

My Chinese herbs or what I like to call - stinky tea!

So my immune system looks to be hanging in there.  I am convinced that the combination of my Chinese herbal tea, diet, positive attitude and regular exercise are all making a big difference!  My spirits are  kept high by all of the supportive messages I am receiving - so thanks to all of you for helping me stay strong.

Day 7 and 8 after chemo seem to be my roughest days - this is when the carboplatin (one of my chemo drugs) peaks.  Today is day 7 and I slept for nearly 11 hours last night!  I plan to go to bed early tonight as well.  My mouth feels a little bit funny and water has a metallic taste.  I now "spike" my water with cranberry juice (unsweetened of course!), lemon juice or lime juice.  That seems to do the trick and helps ensure that I get the high volume of liquids that my body needs.

I won't say too much about our consultation with the reconstruction surgeon, but we learned that when you have radiation treatment after surgery it makes reconstruction more complicated.  It is still totally possible to do, but there are more risks due to the way that radiation affects skin and can affect implants (40% of woman develop complications).  We saw a few photos as well and they strengthened my thinking that no reconstruction is likely a better bet for me.  I am going to talk with some women who are my body type who have had, and have not had, reconstruction and see how that influences my thinking.

We also met with a highly recommended Santa Barbara surgeon, Dr. Grafton.  We really liked her! Interestingly, she let us know that they are keen to learn what I am doing to fare so well in my chemo because 40-50% of women have very serious problems enduring my chemo regime - with a number of them having to abandon their chemo.  So I am very lucky!  We are crossing fingers that the chemo completely wipes out all of my cancer - both of my tumors and the stuff in my lymph nodes (this happens with about 30% of patients).  The Santa Barbara Cancer Center also assigned a nurse navigator to me - whose name is Sam. She joined us at our appointment with Dr. Grafton (As an aside, what is great about having a nurse navigator is that she helps me coordinate treatment, get questions answered, joins me at appointments if I want her to, and is available to help me with whatever).  I wouldn't get this at UCLA!  Thank you SB Cancer Center!  Dr. Grafton also talked to us about doing a less traditional surgical approach with  my lymph nodes (since they have found some cancer there I will need to have surgery there as well).  We still need to read up on it more (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01901094) but essentially, they traditionally take out a small section of lymph nodes (which carries a number of risks).  But a newer approach is that they take 3 sentinel lymph nodes during your surgery (rather than 10-20 lymph nodes) and check the sentinel lymph nodes after the surgery to see if there is any cancer.  If there is cancer, then they go back in and take out some lymph nodes, if not - no more lymph nodes are removed (hooray)!  So this all seems very promising...

Looks Californian to me...

As some of you may know, Chris sometimes thinks of me as his slightly wacky California wife...but he is getting into the California spirit now and letting loose.  As you can see in the photo, Chris let me put my baseball hat wig on his head! I convinced him to do this by letting him know that it would make me laugh - and of course laughter is part of my therapy so he said OK.  And it did make me laugh!!  I don't know about you, but I think he could pass for a local (we just need to put a skateboard in his hand and make sure he says "dude" a lot).  Excellent, party on.

I went out today bald for the first time.  It felt pretty good. I promise to post a bald photo for all of you - but am trying to get a bit of sun on my scalp first so that I don't blind anyone! 

xx
Jodi

My paper flowers from little Charlotte!