Come what may

Eeyore doing what Eeyore does best, poor little guy.

Fair warning:  this is a fairly depressing post so you probably don't really want to read it.  Nothing worse is happening yet, but it's a rainy Thursday outside and it's a rainy Thursday kind of post we have here.  There, you've been warned.

My mom asked my yesterday if I was done blogging now that everything is settled.  I took that as a sign that it was probably past time for me to come back here and post something because:

1. I'm not done blogging
2. Nothing is even close to being settled 

So, to address the first one, what have I been doing to keep me away so long if I haven't been blogging?  (a.k.a. my list of plausible excuses):

Well, part of it was Easter and two weekends in a row with real Easter (with one side of my family) followed by we-don't-want-to-miss-Easter-let's-do-more-Easter (with the other side).  I work on workdays and often take the weekend to post and start writing other posts, so half the weekend gone is a decent chunk of blogging time.

Part of it was dealing with some side effects that aren't dangerous but also aren't fun.  And worrying about them.  And reading more about them.  And trying not to worry about them.  And going back to dealing with them.

Part of it was that I'm now a week and a half out of my 5 days a week radiation therapy.  As seems to be my way, I'm usually good in a crisis and super at dealing with hard things when I'm in the middle of them.  It's a gift, I guess.  But it's when it's all over that I usually need a break to sort through and process what the heck just happened to me.  So, here I am trying to sort through and process in my head before working it out on my blog.

Part of it was that between cooking and cleaning and driving and spending time with my family and reading a good book and reading more about cancer and working and taking a day with my daughter and spending more time at the doctor's and getting more injections and writing things that aren't for here, I'm feeling like I haven't had the time to sit down and write here.  

And honestly?  It's that time thing that's got me a little strung up.  Which gets me back to the "nothing is settled" part of this.  

Metastatic Breast Cancer is cancer for life.  I will have cancer and be in treatment for the rest of my life.  And no one knows if I'll respond to my current treatment or the next one or the one after that.  And no one knows how long any treatment that does work will continue to work because they all will fail at one point and we'll have to move on to something else until there isn't anything else.  And they start out with treatments that have manageable side effects, but as those fail, they will need to start moving to things that are hard.  Which is not one of the happier things for me to dwell on.

As I've said frequently, I hope the Faslodex works for many years.  And in some people it has worked for many years.  And I hope when it does fail, that the next alternative ready to take it's place will be easy and successful, maybe even something new and very effective.  And I hope the same for what ever I'm on after that one fails.

But I don't have the crystal ball I want so badly.  And lately I've been thinking a lot about what this all means.  But I'm not really ready to write about it.

I hate to be the most depressing person in every room I go in, and I try to remain optimistic and remember that there's hope.  And there is hope.  But if I've given the impression that everything is all set and I just need to keep getting injected so that everything will be fine, then I owe you and every stage IV cancer patient you'll ever meet an apology, because that's a lot of misinformation right there.

I have bone scans and CT scans scheduled in about a month and a half.  Those will be the first signs we have to go by on whether or not the current treatments are working at all.  I'm obviously anxious to find out. 

As it stands, with the treatments and technology we have now, that will be the measure of my life.  It comes down to 3 to 4 month segments.  Treatments then scans then treatments then scans.  And that's how we're proceeding: through the darkness with headlight on, illuminating the path ahead 3 to 4 months at a time.

P.S. I read an article this morning online here about breast cancer "awareness" and research and early detection and metastatic breast cancer and what it all means.  It's not for the faint of heart, maybe, but Ann does her research and makes some solid points.  She also has a blog I follow here.

P.P.S.  Please note, and this is important, I didn't say I only have 3-4 months left or that I only have a few 3-4 month segments left.  I hope to have years and years of them strung together.  What I am saying is that that's how far ahead we see at a time, that's how far the plan extends before we need to go back and check the map and see where we need to go, metaphorically speaking.