I finished my chemo on March 11, the hard part is finally
over! I’ve managed to keep the majority of my eyebrows and about half of my
eyelashes. I’m happy to say that most of the side effects have diminished,
besides the brutal hot flashes. The tingly finger and toes, headaches, nausea,
fatigue, and bone pain are all gone! I’m still dealing with “chemo brain”…I
feel as if I have short-term memory loss, which can be quite frustrating!
I spent a few days down at Stanford last week repeating
scans and a biopsy of my lymph nodes. The lymph node that was biopsied had shrunk
too much to get any returns. I’m still awaiting results from the scans.
The next step is surgery. I head back down to Stanford
Monday, surgery is Tuesday, and if everything goes well I should be heading
back home Thursday! I will be having a bilateral mastectomy with immediate
reconstruction (expanders will be put in day of surgery). I have volunteered to
be part of a couple research projects at Stanford as a way to give back to the
breast cancer community. I will be donating all the tissue and lymph nodes they
remove, as well as being part of a pain management project. If it weren’t for
other women who volunteered to be part of these experiments I may not have been
able to survive the cancer or been able to handle the chemo so well. I also
will be donating any eggs I don’t use in the future for further research. I
hope these projects will help future breast cancer patients.
A huge thanks for all the support, prayers, and thoughts!
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