7 months (or the natural history of breast cancer)

Cancer, chemo, and chocolate chip cookies

I read something interesting this morning.  I was searching for a chart I had seen a while ago and came across an article that included data I hadn't seen before about the "natural history of untreated breast cancer," which, at least in this context, means what happens if you just leave the cancer to do what it does and don't try and stop it.  I guess I don't really need to tell you, but, as it turns out, things don't go well when you do that.

For very obvious reasons, the patients studied for this were diagnosed between 1805 and 1933.  It basically looks at women who had breast cancer before there were treatments for breast cancer.

(On a related note, be aware that the article itself is over 10 years old and a lot has changed in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer in the intervening decade, so I wouldn't actually recommend reading too much into the facts and figures quoted in the rest of the article any more than I would recommend going right now to Blockbusters so you can rent that great new movie Moulin Rouge! on VHS to keep you busy while waiting for book 5 of the Harry Potter series to come out.  Especially because the stats reported on in the article were from a time when Tupac was alive and Friends was a new show on TV.)

But anyway, I had read some time ago that untreated breast cancer patients had a median survival of about 2.5 years from the time the lump was discovered to eventual death.  Turns out it's actually 2.7 years and this article reports some more figures I didn't know before, including that women with untreated grade 3 breast cancer (the faster growing kind that mine is) lived a median of 22 months--that is, half of them died in less time and half of them survived past that point.  Also, not one of the untreated grade 3 patients was alive 5 years later.

So, I am very happy to report that 22 months from finding the lumps, for me, was last February and, I can assure you, I am still alive.  Go science.  Better living--and just plain being alive--through chemistry is at work in my life.

February, you know, was winter, spring, summer, and newly fall crisp days ago.  Also 41 blog posts of varying degrees of stress, hope, resignation, and silver-lining-searching ago (wouldn't you know it, exactly, to the very day, 22 months after my first biopsy that confirmed my stage III grade 3 cancer, I posted this stressed out little post about my impending stage IV diagnosis.  Which, quite frankly, while a difficult and unpleasant time, was still better than being the day I died.)  And, it was also lots of nice, normal, going about life days ago--which is kind of a miracle given what would have been going on (or not going on) had I been born roughly 80 years before I was.

I have more scans coming up next month that will give us a better idea of what's happening now, but at the moment I feel really good.  And happy.  And definitely not 7 months in the grave.  And for that, and every single anything I've done over the past 7 months (including the stupid things like mopping the floors and playing Plants vs. Zombies, and also the fun things like vacation days, birthday parties, and dying parts of my daughter's and her friend's hair blue, because it all works together to make up a life), I need to thank my surgeons, oncologists, and all the people who brought us some really spiffy advancements in chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and hormonal therapy.

What have you done in the past 7 months that you're glad you didn't miss?

A little bit of surgery

I had a little bit of surgery today.  Some scar revision ("dog ears" and something I'm just going to call "one big step towards looking like a human"--I think my fellow BC patients and friends of BC patients will guess what I mean, anyone else who stumbles upon this blog and doesn't understand really doesn't need to.  And I'm certainly not planning to add to their ranks by adding dubious Google terms!

I've come to the point where walk in day surgery has become no big deal, but at the same time, I surprised myself over the past couple of days when I suddenly realized I was really anxious.  Hard to explain how I could feel both at once, but I sure did.

I wasn't really anxious about the procedure itself, but more about messing up my current run of fairly smooth healing and what I consider stellar results.  My plastic surgeon is, I have discovered after my first surgery, extremely gifted. 

I don't live my life in regrets, but I guess if I think on it, I actually do tend to live my life trying to avoid being regretful.  Which actually, when I put it down in words, sounds like one of those slogans that pop up on Facebook and get written in pretty script on walls and wood blocks.  But in real life, or at least in my real life, it tends to be more like, "be really, really careful and don't wish you still had whatever it is you just messed up."

And that, I think, isn't really print-it-on-a-block material!

So here I was with results I was very pleased with and could have lived happily with, at least as far as they went. and going in for the next step, and praying I didn't end up praying to be back to before (well, not really "before" because that's how I tend to think about pre-cancer, but you know what I mean).

But at the same time, I've discovered that it's really important to me to look more like I consider human being more of the time (not judging people who make other choices but this is mine, should also add that my husband couldn't care less).

And the really weird thing?  I'm all wrapped up for 2 weeks and can't even shower, much less see the results (which is really cute given all the surgical magic marker that covers me even under the clear plastic bandage pieces!).  And yet I feel better.  Much better.

I attribute that to two things:

1) My husband, who is exactly the kind of guy you want by your side when the going gets rough.  He was raised with a strong sense of the importance of doing what needs to be done (He emptied my JP drains twice a day the entire time they were in after the mastectomy.  He-man is all well and good, but give me a man who sticks by my side through sickness and health with love and compassion and I feel like that's a win.)

2) My surgeon coming in with his magic marker and carefully studying the placement of things.  His attention to detail and calm confidence helped me remember how it was with the first step.  I guess a little of that confidence wore off.

(Actually, seeing myself type these things, I may also have to attribute it to this morning's anesthesia.  They told me to avoid making decisions.  Seemed a little melodramatic but objectively I may be just a little bit off kilter at the moment so maybe there's more to it?)

So now, I'm trying to see if I can get away with Tylenol instead of opiates (I get very nausious and have headaches, but so far so good!), wrapped up in post-surgical bindings like the bastard child of Scarlett O'Hara and King Tut, and feeling pretty darn glad to have that over with.

Here's to a nice long life of looking more and more like the human I am!

(Now I hit publish and wonder how this post will seem to me when the anesthesia is fully worn off?)