... but only in retrospect in this case. Two years ago today I received a phone call that changed my life, the one where you hear "you have cancer" and everything after that sounds like Charlie Browns teacher Mrs. Orthmork. It was a glorious Friday afternoon and Dori and I sat in the backyard with hounds and screamed fuck for an hour. I saw a surgeon on Monday who referred me to a medical oncologist. The volume of information came swiftly with not enough time to comprehend it all. Except, "you're going to lose your hair, all of your hair" and I did, but first it hurt. I have been so hungover that my hair hurt, this was worse. Alas, I digress, the upshot was that the plan was for 6 rounds of TCHP (taxotere, carboplatin, herceptin, and perjeta) thankfully the perjeta got dropped shortly after we discussed the inclination of my guts to rebel, and they rebeled big time. My first procedure after the biopsy was port installation, never having had any anesthesia beyond Novocaine, this was nerve wracking, as was the first mri. After the initial bout of chemo, I had 6 weeks to recover from the chemo which was a white-hot bitch and have a lumpectomy that removed 48 grams of tissue (less than 2 ounces), though I'm still walking lopsided and now can foretell the weather. After 6 weeks of recovery from that (slowed me down so much I was throwing hatchets the very next week)
I started with immunotherapy (herceptin) and radiation-21 rounds- 5 days a week. After recovery from radiation, onto targeted chemo -herceptin and an antineoplastic agent whose name escapes) my rudimentary understanding is that the herceptin works on hormone receptors in such a way that the antineo kills any cancer cells that survived the first rounds of chemo, and the radiation and the surgery. So as i say to myself 100 times per day, every day I AM CURED. And I am grateful.
Scorecard for my own need for accounting
6 rounds of TCH chemo
1 lumpectomy
1 port installation
1 port removal
21 rounds of radiation
4 rounds of immunotherapy
14 rounds of targeted chemo
9 (and counting mammograms, not including the 25 clean ones I've had previously (
